Smart Grid Report explores IEC CIM and 61850 harmonization.
Press Release Summary:
"Harmonizing the IEC Common Information Model (CIM) and 61850 - Key to Achieve Smart Grid Interoperability Objectives" describes harmonizing process for IEC CIM and 61850 standards via creation of unified information model that provides common set of semantics for use by CIM and 61850 standards. Report concludes that it is possible to create common unified model which supports both standards for generating information exchanges expressed in CIM/XML files/messages or 61850 SCL XML.
Original Press Release:
EPRI Has Published a Report Titled, "Harmonizing the IEC Common Information Model (CIM) and 61850 - Key to Achieve Smart Grid Interoperability Objectives"
This report describes the harmonizing process for the IEC CIM and 61850 standards through the creation of a unified information model that provides a common set of semantics for use by both the CIM and 61850 standards.
Here is a brief overview of this report.
The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has sponsored the development of a number of international standards that provide the basis for information exchange to support power system management. One of the most important standards is the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Common Information Model (CIM), which is rapidly gaining acceptance throughout the world as a common semantic model to unify and integrate the data from numerous systems involved in the support of real-time electric utility operations. Another is the IEC 61850 series of standards for substation automation that EPRI initially sponsored as well.
This report describes the work accomplished in 2009 and early 2010 to harmonize the CIM and 61850 standards through the creation of a unified information model that provides a common set of semantics for use by both the CIM and 61850 standards. Utilities should be able to exchange information between systems and devices using a common language supported by both, regardless of the specific interface involved. This can be achieved by having a common semantic model from which the specific information to be exchanged can be derived, thus avoiding the proliferation of endless point-to-point links, each based on a different set of semantics. While mapping is still required from a system's native representation of data to the standards-based common language for information exchange, this approach ensures that an accurate and lossless transformation occurs at every interface to another system where the common semantic model is applied. This is, in fact, the stated vision for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Smart Grid Interoperability Framework.
Results and Findings
A unified information model expressed in UML was developed by extending the existing IEC 61968/70 CIM UML model to incorporate extensions needed to support the IEC 61850 semantic concepts defined in 61850-6 Substation Configuration Language (SCL) since there was no UML information model in 61850. Although the goal was to minimize changes to the existing SCL standards, some changes are proposed to SCL to address differences in modeling approaches and functionality.
The conclusion was that it is possible to create a common unified model that supports both the CIM and 61850 standards for generating information exchanges expressed in either CIM/XML files/ messages or 61850 SCL XML.
Don Kintner
EPRI
dkintner@epri.com
704-595-2506
