Common Information Model – A Developer ’ s Perspective etrep 02 . pdf

The Common Information Model (CIM) defines a utility industry standard object-model for the development and integration of applications used for electric power systems engineering, planning, management, operation and commerce. This paper addresses the following questions: • Why was it developed? • What does it model? How is it defined? • What is the impact on software developers? • Who is using it? Why was it developed? Even though most Energy Management Systems (EMS) and Distribution Management Systems (DMS) are now supplied with standard operating systems on standard computer platform hardware, these systems are still built with proprietary databases. A proprietary database restricts access by third parties to design software and add applications. Future upgrades and add-ons that involve significant changes to the installed system must be made by the original supplier or by an in house team. Often the customer bears the full cost for such changes. By contrast, an EMS or DMS with an industry-standard database and interfaces that are openly published will enable incremental growth. The customer can select the best software without being restricted by proprietary terms or by non-standard designs Common Information Model – A Developer’s Perspective (etr 0-7695-0001-3/99 $1 The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) Working Group on Control Center Application Interfaces (CCAPI) has as its objectives to publish a set of guidelines for application interfaces, to develop associated support tools, and to promote the use of open software engineering approaches in EMS [1]. The Working Group consists of management and technical representatives from EPRI, utility companies, EMS vendors and EMS software developers. Recently, the group has been broadened to include DMS vendors and DMS software developers. The CIM is the foundation of the overall CCAPI framework. The CIM provides a standard for representing power system objects along with their attributes and relationships. The CIM facilitates the integration of: EMS applications developed by different vendors; entire EMS systems developed by different vendors; or EMS systems and other systems concerned with different aspects of power system operations, such as generation or distribution management.