2 Smart Grid Handbook
Model (SGAM), which was developed by the ESOs to identify the most relevant smart grid standards and
future standardization actions (CEN-CENELEC-ETSI Smart Grid Coordination Group, 2012). In Uslar et al.
(2013), an overview of the most important roadmaps on smart grid interoperability is given, summarizing
the consolidated results in order to present a set of core information and communication technologies (ICT)
standards for the realization of smart grids.
All the aforementioned studies highlight the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) as the main
standardization body in the electricity sector. In particular, the IEC Technical Committee 57 (TC 57) is in
charge of creating and maintaining the most relevant international standards that promote interoperability for
power system management. As explained in the reference architecture dened by the IEC TC57, previous
standardization efforts were mainly focused on the denition of communication protocols for transferring
the data (Draft: IEC 62357-1 – Power Systems Management and Associated Information Exchange – Part 1:
Reference Architecture, 2015). However, the increasing use of object modeling techniques and model-driven
integration (MDI) architectures has shifted the focus to interoperability at the semantic level. This means that
devices and applications from different vendors not only have to exchange data but they also need to share
a common understanding on the semantics of this data in order to interoperate with each other. Therefore,
semantic integration has become a key enabler of future smart grids.
Many IEC standards for the electricity systems include data models formally dening specic domain
terms for information exchange, which signicantly reduce semantic integration efforts. This chapter focuses
on the most widely adopted standard data model for electricity transmission networks, the common infor-
mation model (CIM) as dened in the IEC 61970 transmission series.
The remainder of the chapter is organized as follows. In Section 2, an overview of the CIM IEC 61970
transmission series is given. The CIM IEC 61970 data model and associated exchange formats are described
in Sections 3 and 4, respectively. Some of the most widely used software tools for managing CIM data are
then presented in Section 5. Real case studies showing the benets of adopting the CIM for transmission
system operation and planning are summarized in Section 6. Finally, Section 7 concludes the chapter and
provides an outlook on future work.
2 An Overview of the CIM IEC 61970 Transmission Series
The CIM was originally developed by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in the United States
with the aim of promoting interoperability with regard to the energy management systems (EMSs) that
supervise and control power transmission networks (EPRI, 2015). At present, it is dened in international
standards developed by the IEC TC57 and has a wider scope covering information exchanges with regard to
electricity markets and distribution management systems (DMSs), which are in charge of managing power
distribution networks. The groups of experts within the IEC T57 responsible for maintaining the CIM work
in close collaboration with the CIM Users Group (CIMug), which is an association of users of the CIM
including utilities, software vendors, manufacturers, consultants, and Research and Development (R&D)
organizations “dedicated to managing and communicating issues concerning the IEC TC57 CIM standards
and to serving as the primary means for developing consensus and consistency across the industry.”
1
The
main objectives of the CIMug are to promote the CIM, provide a central repository for CIM issues and
models, offer a single point of contact for CIM model management, facilitate awareness of CIM products
and implementations, and establish liaison with other standards groups.
The CIM IEC TC57 standards are grouped in three main series: IEC 61970 transmission series, maintained
by Working Group (WG) 13 within the IEC TC57, focus on energy management system applications; IEC
1
CIM Users Group: http://cimug.ucaiug.org/.
Smart Grid Handbook, Online © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This article is © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This article was published in the Smart Grid Handbook in 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118755471.sgd094
