Evolution of Power System CIM to Digital Twins - A Comprehensive Review and Analysis

Common Information Model (CIM) is a well established open standard in the power systems domain due to its common shared vocabulary used to communicate messages between various applications. CIM provides a basic framework for information exchange, and it needs to be extended as and when new business requirements arise. CIM has multiple utilisation in power system application ranging from developing an interoperable software application to a cyber-physical system. It is considered as one of the enablers for smart grids because of its robust framework for accurate data sharing, merging, and transformation into reusable information. The latest power system digital twins’ trend to establish smarter energy grids highlights new requirements for CIM utilisation. In this context, this paper aims to offer a comprehensive understanding by summarising and categorising the research on CIM’s practical use for interoperability in smart grids. Index Terms—Common Information Models (CIM), Smart Grids, IEC61970, Interoperability, Digital Twin (DT), Ontology