IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2016 - 66

substation-level data at the lower end and sends relevant data
to the ems at the higher end. thus, the Cim helps in seamless
integrations at all levels.

The CIM for Compliance:
Realizing Security and Reliability
Because the modern grid is highly interconnected due to the
widespread application of internet protocol (ip) communication and increasingly complex as a result of deregulation,
security and reliability are important and challenging in this
setting. examples of security and reliability concerns are
hard to miss. in 2013, the industrial Control systems Cyber
emergency response team, a division of the u.s. Department of homeland security, responded to 145 cyber threats
in the energy sector, more than the other 15 u.s. critical
infrastructure sectors combined. on the reliability front,
the 2003 blackout in the northeastern united states-with
impacts spanning Canada, michigan, and new york-and
the 2012 blackout in india that plunged over 600 million
people into darkness are stark reminders of the challenges.
Due to the criticality of these issues, agencies such as the
north american electric reliability Corporation (nerC), the
european network of transmission system operators, and
the european network and information security agency have
developed regulatory requirements and best practice guidance.
nerC Critical infrastructure protection (Cip) standards are
an example of requirements to ensure security, and nerC
protection and Control (prC) standards are an example of
requirements to ensure reliability. nerC Cip and prC are
enforceable regulatory requirements. Compliance with these
standards requires, for instance, connecting to protective
relays at specified periodicity to check the system configuration (security compliance) or their protection function (reliability compliance).
erecting another silo solution for compliance activities is
an ineffective approach. Doing so replicates many functions
that are already available in other utility systems. an efficient

and effective solution espoused by many forward-looking
utilities consists of the following elements:
✔ hardened, secure field devices that may be used in
security-critical environments such as electrical
substations
✔ integration with wams so that the tasks and resources
are delivered to the field force device automatically
✔ gis integration for test/compliance task visualization
✔ test/compliance database integration so that the test
results are automatically uploaded to the database server.
the 61968-4 standard enables the integrations outlined
for network and asset management. Cim-based integration
is versatile and flexible. the Cim even has concepts such
as "Document" that can enable the exchange of documents
such as machine-generated system security logs. the use of
Cim-based integration in these new business process areas
helps to reduce the distance to integrate (figure 1) and,
instead of creating an isolated silo, creates a foundation for
an agile business landscape.

The CIM in India: Smart and Sustainable
Energy in the Developing World
the Cim can play a pivotal role in the developing world
by helping electric utilities leapfrog to smart and sustainable energy by leveraging Cim-enabled smart-data systems.
in india, the need for developing Cim-based standards has
been identified by the indian utilities and the Bureau of
indian standards (Bis). the Bis litD-10 committee is
the national mirror committee of ieC tC57 in india. as
an extension of the Cim to suit the requirements of indian
power grids, Bis has published Cim standards along with
application use cases related to indian power grid scenarios.
in india, the process of implementing the Cim in distribution utilities has commenced under the restructured
accelerated power Development and reforms program
(r-apDrp). the program includes standards-based development of a decision-support system to aid system operators

table 1. IEC 61968-DMS functions and subfunctions.

Distribution Functions

Distribution Subfunctions

Network operation (NO)

NO monitoring, network control, fault management, operation feedback analysis,
operation statistics and reporting, network calculations-real time, dispatcher training

Records and asset management

Substation and network inventory, geographical inventory, asset investment planning

Operational planning and
optimization

Network operation simulation, switch action scheduling/operation work scheduling, power
import scheduling and optimization

Maintenance and construction

Maintenance and inspection, construction, design, work scheduling and dispatching, field
recording

Network extension planning

Network calculations, construction supervision, project definition

Customer support

Customer service, trouble call management, point of sale

Meter reading and control

Meter reading, advanced metering infrastructure, demand response, load control, meter
operations, meter data management, metering system, meter maintenance (MM), meter
data, premise area network

ieee power & energy magazine

january/february 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2016