De-Mystifying Smart Grid Standards - Common Information Model (CIM)

"The “De-mystifying Smart Grid Standards” series started by reviewing new networking specifications - IEEE 802.15.4g, 15.4e, RoLL - part of the end-to-end Smart Grid communications architecture. The adoption of a TCP/IP-based framework for network communications enables Smart Grid applications to develop independently of the lower layers’ evolution and to leverage the standards-based two-way communications capabilities for important benefits such as:

• Load control
• Dynamic pricing
• Outage detection
• Distributed energy resource (DER) control signals
• On-demand read

But TCP/IP does not address the challenges of data representation and exchange within and between Distribution Management Systems such as these Smart Grid domain/sub-domain examples:

• Customer domains
  
  • Business/building Area Networks (BAN)
  • Home Area Networks (HAN)
  • Industrial Area Networks (IAN)
• Operation domains
  
  • Monitoring
  • Control
  • Fault management"

More: Archrock Blog