Input Data

Standard Input

Prescient requires information about the system being studied, such as the generators, buses, loads, and so on. This information is typically read into Prescient from a collection of CSV files in a format similar to that used by RTS-GMLC. See The CSV Input File Format reference for a detailed description of CSV input files and their contents.

Input files are placed together into a single directory. When running Prescient, the directory containing the input files is specified using the –data-path configuration option. Prescient will look in the input directory for files that follow the standard naming convention, such as gen.csv, branch.csv, and so on.

Custom Data Providers

As an alternative to reading data from the standard CSV input files, it is possible to provide data from other sources using a custom data provider.

Internally, Prescient stores data in the Egret format. A custom data provider is a python module that populates an Egret model with initial data, and updates it with timeseries data as the simulation progresses. For details, see Custom Input Data Providers in the reference section.

To use a custom data provider, set the –data-provider configuration option to the name or path of the desired python module.