CIM Interop Working Group

The CIM Interop Working Group evaluates the interoperability of EMS and third-party vendor products through the administration of formal test procedures. Interoperability testing establishes that products from different participant vendors can exchange information based on the use of the IEC standards that have been developed as an output of the CCAPI project.  These standards include various parts of the IEC 61970 standards.

This group’s objectives are:

• Demonstrate interoperability between different products based on the CIM. This includes applications from EMS vendors as well as independently developed applications from third party suppliers.
• Verify compliance with the CIM for those CIM classes/attributes involved in the information exchanges supported by the tests.
• Validate the correctness and completeness of the CPSM document.
• Demonstrate the exchange of power system models using the CIM and an RDF Schema and XML representation of the model data.
• Demonstrate the actual field implementation of an integration project using the IEC 61970 standards.
• Validate the test Models, the UML and the RDF files created for the tests.
• Validate the tools including the rdf generation tools and the model validation tools.
• The ENTSO-E IOP “CIM for System Development and Operations” that covers all needs of system development and operations such as operational to operational exchanges, operational to planning, short circuit data, planning, dynamics exchanges and the interface with distribution. Specific data collection and data processes can also be tested. The goal is to allow and facilitate any kind of study in TSOs’ scope: static analyses, dynamic studies, short circuit assessments, etc.;
• The ENTSO-E IOP “CIM for Energy Market” that covers needs of market exchanges. It contributes to the further development of the IEM (European Internal Energy Market) by actively supporting market harmonization and integration and plays a crucial role for demonstrating the correctness of European market CIM profile.

The purpose of these tests is to demonstrate the interoperability of the ENTSO-E CIM-based data exchange format and the IEC CIM-based standard taking into account all changes proposed to be included in the updated CIM standard. The tests are also designed in order to allow vendors to verify the correctness of the implementation of the updated CIM standard and to support ENTSO-E processes towards achieving the objectives given to ENTSO-E by the EU Third Energy Package. More specifically, the Regulation 714/2009 on conditions for access to the network for cross-border exchanges in electricity states that ENTSO-E has to adopt common network operation tools to ensure the coordination of network operation, to elaborate network codes on data exchange and interoperability rules as well as transparency rules.

The adoption of the ENTSO-E CIM interoperability tests and the CIM/XML-based data exchange format is a direct contribution to the above mentioned tasks since it supports data exchanges and ensures the interoperability of the tools used in the ENTSO-E data exchange processes. The experience gained from the process of developing and implementing CIM-based standards will directly contribute to the future network code development as data exchange processes will be part of several network codes.