A component represents an element of a system. Typically, systems are made up of different entities and layers which can be modeled by components. In other words, a system can be considered a collection of related components.
Notice that a component is a black-box definition of each entity involved in an optimization study, so detailed modeling of the entities being involved in the optimization is not required. The only relevant elements are the parameters that are involved in the optimization and the metrics that are collected to evaluate the results of such an optimization.
Notice that only the entities that are directly involved in the optimization need to be modeled and defined within Akamas. An entity is involved in an optimization study if it is optimized or monitored by Akamas, where "optimized" means that Akamas is optimizing at least one of its parameters, and "monitored" means that Akamas is monitoring at least one of its metrics.
A component is described by the following mandatory properties (other properties can be defined but are not mandatory):
a name that uniquely identifies the component within the system
a description that clarifies what the component refers to
a component type that identifies the technology of the component (see component type)
In general, a component contains a set of each of the following:
parameter(s) in the scope of the optimization
metric(s) needed to define the optimization goal
metric(s) needed to define the optimization constraints
metric(s) that are not needed to either define the optimization goal or constraints, and hence not used by Akamas to perform the optimization, but are collected in order to support the analysis (and which can be possibly added at a later time as part of optimization goal or constraint when refining the optimization).
The construct to be used to define a component is described on the Component template page.
A component is an Akamas resource that can be managed via CLI using the resource management commands.
The Akamas UI shows more details about components by drilling down their respective system.