Implementing Smart Grid standards: A letter from the trenches

The stamp of approval has been given by the global community around two standards: the Common Information Model (CIM) (IEC 61979 and IEC 61968) and IEC 61850. Together, these models offer a comprehensive view of the business with an opportunity to allow data from substations to readily flow into utility operational and enterprise systems, thus enabling the smarts of the grid, but there are a number of challenges that must be addressed before the benefits are reaped. CIM and IEC 61850 have been developed to address the needs of two different worlds with fuzzy connection points. Integrating these two models on paper may be relatively simple, but there is a lot more effort involved when it comes to making it work in the real world. And what happens to all the sources of data that exist in pre-standards format today? Once the decision has been made to adopt these standards, the real work begins. This paper will discuss business challenges from the trenches of implementing one of the first real-world applications of a CIM/IEC 61850 harmonized solution.