Using CIM for Smart Grid ICT integration

The eTelligence project explores and demonstrates various smart energy grid ideas by using modern ICT (information and communications technology). For this purpose, many new and heterogeneous types of smart grid systems have to be developed and integrated, such as a regional energy market, distributed energy management systems, and an advanced metering infrastructure. The future interaction scenarios of such new systems are still topics of research, which calls for an architecture easily supporting future changes. The integration capabilities of the eTelligence ICT architecture are based on standardized communication, especially using IEC 61970/61968 (Common Information Model, CIM) and an easily extensible market product description language also realized with CIM. Additionally, we present a process model for using CIM, and report our experiences from using CIM for integration.