-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 4
CIM
The utility common information model (CIM) (pronounced, "sim"), began as a control center application programming interface (CC-API) project at EPRI Product ID: 1001975, which was initiated in 1993.
An information model is a reference that documents data objects that reflect certain real-world things. These data objects could be assets such as transformers, or concepts such as organizations, or people (for example, defining the concept of a "crew"). Each of these data objects has attributes that indicate the properties of the data object. The information model will also document the kinds of relationships between data objects - whether something inherits its attributes from some parent, or the multiplicity of a relationship between objects, for example, 1-to-1, 1-to-many, or many-to-many.
The CIM is expressed using a visual representation, which is itself its own standard, unified modeling language (UML). The example below shows the classes, attributes, and relationships between IdentifiedObject and the Names hierarchy. These classes are used to give object a unique identity that can be used to track objects, messages, or identities that might be stored in a database.
Today the CIM is maintained by the CIM Users Group, an industry alliance under the organizational umbrella of the Utility Communications Architecture International Users Group (UCAIUG). What put the "common" in "common information model" is that this information model is now used as a reference for three International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards; IEC 61970 - Energy management system application program interface, IEC 61968 - Application integration at electric utilities - System interfaces for distribution management, and IEC 62325 - Framework for energy market communications.
In addition to these families of standards, there are also standards that relate to how to do application integration using these standards. For example, IEC 61968-100:2013 - Application Integration for 61968 profiles, gives guidance on how to do CIM-based messaging, primarily using SOAP over HTTP. For those that are interested in using REST/JSON, a draft standard, 62361-104 is in development.