Programme

• Understanding the CIM framework and how it breaks down:
  • IEC 61970-301
  • IEC 61968
  • IEC 62325
• Evaluating the current limitations of CIM and how these are being addressed to smooth out the integration of internal systems with external companies
• Determining realistic timelines for the full implementation of CIM for each protocol
• Understanding how the Common Grid Model (CGM) and Individual Grid Models (IGM) relate to CIM
• Mapping out a realistic roadmap for full CIM implementation across the entire utility organisation

• Understanding how the different interest groups are working to drive the evolution of CIM to its next level of usability:
  • IEC Working Groups
  • UCA User Group
  • ENTSO-E
• Clarifying end-user feedback on CIM and identifying opportunities for fast-tracking CIM developments in favour of end-user needs
• Identifying gaps in the CIM, CGM and IGM models and determining realistic solutions to address these
• Evaluating how new regulation is driving CIM evolution:
  • CACM regulation
  • Network Code on Forward Capacity Allocation (FCA regulation)
  • Network Code on System Operation (System Operation Guideline – SOGL)
• Clarifying the full potential of CIM in the DSO environment and determining how it needs to evolve to better meet their needs

• Mapping out the complete range of CIM applications and tools, and prioritising the systems that should be integrated first to maximise ROI
• Comparing the benefits of adopting CIM with bespoke alternatives, in terms of technical efficiency, resource competency, and overall project time and cost implications
• Evaluating the pros and cons of internally developed CIM solutions compared with off-the-shelf solutions offered by vendors
• Demonstrating how CIM can be positioned as an investment that delivers significant ROI rather than an ongoing overhead
• Identifying and mitigating the risks that are inherent in CIM implementation to ensure projects are delivered to time and within budget
• Preparing for board scrutiny of the CIM integration plan and striking the balance between optimal planning and actual delivery of milestones and results

• Establishing a realistic growth forecast for CIM adoption within the smart grid environment
• Mapping out the complete range of CIM applications in the context of new power system trends such as DER integration and Smart Metering
• Evaluating the implementation challenges that must be overcome to speed up adoption across the wider smart utility industry
• Clarifying the CIM benefits that must be communicated across the smart utility industry to stimulate information sharing, drive mass adoption, and reduce costs through economies of scale
• Identifying how suppliers and utilities must work more closely together to ensure the appropriate adoption of CIM tools into systems
• Identifying opportunities for speeding up the deployment of CIM and maximising its market size in the next 3-5 years

• Breaking down the status of CIM activity within IEC TC57 and identifying the benefits that each distinct group are delivering
• Understanding working group activity, including meeting schedules, content, membership, and output and how these are evolving to meet the need for faster integration of systems and markets
• Striving to balance supplier and utility, TSO and DSO involvement in working group activity to ensure a true representation of industry wide opinions and needs
• Clarifying the relationship between IEC CIM working groups and ENTSO-E and how this can be developed to speed up the evolution of the standard
• Establishing the scope for EDSO and other DSO related interest groups to work more closely with IEC CIM working groups to drive the adoption of CIM in the distribution network
• Determining how the IEC CIM working groups can power the development and awareness of the standard to transform its market position and drive its mass up-take

• Defining a strategy for engaging external consultants to embed CIM knowledge into the organisation rapidly whilst managing the transfer to knowledge to ensure long term internal control and maintenance of CIM-enabled systems
• Making the case internally for investing in CIM education to secure appropriate levels of board investment to ensure long term commitment to the standard
• Overcoming the challenges of educating IT teams with power system knowledge to provide appropriate context for CIM knowledge transfer and creating UML models
• Leveraging vendor expertise to benefit from the appropriate resources and training needed to maintain CIM upgrades for internal and external systems
• Measuring the impact of your CIM knowledge transfer programme through time and cost savings made

• Understanding how different system vendors are interpreting the application of IEC 61970 into their products and the implications of this for utilities integrating multiple vendors’ systems
• Creating a roadmap for CIM implementation across multi-layered systems starting with storage of multiple data streams for offline calculation, to manage the risks around CIM investment
• Evaluating a range of advanced CIM tools on the market to assess their suitability for both immediate and longer-term network modelling and asset lifecycle management
• Extracting relevant historical and current datasets from across your systems and devices to determine the most appropriate CIM profile and support the seamless flow of multiple data streams
• Establishing the best methodology to create your own adaptor or plugin when working in proprietary systems in order ensure CIM standard compliance
• Taking the location of different offices into account when managing and visualising your data so it can all be viewed in the same way
• Establishing the timelines for achieving a return on investment on full implementation of CIM IEC 61970

Choose from a selection of intimate roundtable discussions, each addressing a key theme arising from the day’s discussions, allowing you to gain deeper insights into the most specific issues impacting your CIM implementation

The opportunity to relax and unwind after a full day of presentations and panel discussions, meet with colleagues across the European Smart Grid CIM community, reflect on new ideas and create new opportunities for collaboration

• Establishing a robust framework for integrating multi-layer systems that adheres to ISO 55000 and PAS1192
• Evaluating the pros and cons of parallel evolution of Building Information Model (BIM) and CIM and their potential convergence
• Enabling asset performance management with relevant dynamic data through effective use of CIM
• Moving towards open architecture systems for a more flexible approach to standardised protocols
• Effectively leveraging IEC 61970 for enhanced lifecycle management
• Developing cost-effective solutions to implement CIM that supports all aspects of lifecycle management

• Establishing a framework for the application of CIM in the DER domain, given the range and variety of systems involved, such as wind turbines, solar panels, microgrids, energy storage, EVs among others
• Determining how the IEC CIM working group and related interest groups can work more closely together to firm up the definition and application of CIM within the DER domain
• Accurately planning for future extensions and add-ons to circumvent future grid disruptions
• Effectively leveraging IEC 61968-900 as an enhancement of IEC 61968-9 and IEC 61968-100 to achieve enhanced real-time analysis
• Determining how vendor tools can be further developed to more accurately forecast power flow and voltage management at the grid edge
• Demonstrating the benefits of full CIM implementation within the DER domain through measuring reductions in outage frequency and time

During this session 3-4 CIM-enabled tool and technology providers will share insights into how their solutions are being applied and developed to better support smart utility CIM requirements. Each speaker will give a 15-minute presentation followed by 30 minutes of panel debate with audience participation. This is your opportunity to quiz the technology innovators and influence the future direction of CIM based product innovation in favour of end-user needs.

• Investigating the drivers accelerating the growth of energy trading and the implications for integrating internal and external systems
• Evaluating various methods for increasing the frequency and accuracy of data acquisition to improve network modelling and reduce outage times
• Benchmarking the latest tools available to support the application of IEC 62325 for improved data management and modelling
• Converting smart metering and DER market related data from multiple sources to a format that ensures its easy compliance with IEC 62325
• Determining how best to break out network activity models in conjunction with asset and equipment
• Ensuring that different business units and functions are able to access and understand multiple datasets on a granular level
• Upgrading attributes from old system architectures in order to generate CIM codes that are readable by humans and machines
• Examining lessons learnt from current applications of IEC 62325 and understanding how these insights can be applied to future implementations

• Determining ways to more accurately map the network model for a variety of data types
• Representing similar components with different specialised attributes to ensure increased accuracy in defining the network model
• Assessing different methodologies for applying GIS information either from in-house sources or external consultants
• Simplifying the way you define the ontology and topology of your network through the extension of existing attributes
• Accurately pinpointing geolocations of assets with specially defined attributes
• Interpreting CIM equivalent attributes for mapping grid components onto a target system
• Efficiently combining topological and grid power data to convert into a specific data model for enhanced power system simulation

• Developing tools and techniques that facilitate scalable and secure information exchange between TSOs and DSOs
• Effectively managing large influxes of TSO and DSO data to support the development of the H2020 TDX-ASSIST Project
• Incorporating cybersecurity best practices to ensure full protection of grid model data
• Maximising interoperability of information exchange and communications through effective application of existing and emerging international smart grid ICT standards
• Measuring the benefits of achieving wide-scale TSO-DSO data exchange to deliver increased visibility of the European regional power system

• Evaluating how CIM compares with alternative standards for system integration in terms of ease of implementation, reliability and security
• Using CIM to integrate Network Management, Outage Management, GIS, Asset Management and Customer Management systems
• Adopting CIM for integration with external parties in a DSO world
• Lessons learned in the configuration of CIM and its role in integration
• Building in-house CIM expertise to ease the configuration process across different systems

• Assessing the extent to which interoperability challenges are currently impeding system integration
• Devising a standardised approach to defining attributes within your network across multiple systems
• Resynchronising your network model to conform with updated semantics of new CIM versions
• Simplifying the process for defining specialised fields for the same components across different systems to ensure the seamless interoperability of CIM
• Performing live demonstrations and IOP tests to ensure maximised visibility of grid schematics of network models
• Devising a unified approach to ensure compatibility of mRID in XML format between different vendor systems
• Highlighting the opportunities created by better interoperability of CIM systems and versions

• Understanding the rate at which data volumes and complexity are increasing as the smart grid evolves
• Establishing a formatting framework that enables data to be received and clearly understood by both human and machine operators
• Filtering out multiple granular data sets in order to identify the most relevant data required to create a UML model
• Managing historical and real-time datasets to increase the accuracy of defining attributes
• Creating a platform for temporarily storing data for future interpretations
• Measuring the impact of advanced data formatting and management on operational efficiency

• Establishing trust between utilities and suppliers to ensure a robust framework for working collaboratively on bringing CIM based solutions to the market more rapidly
• Effectively articulating utility requirements to ensure that end-user needs are appropriately captured in the specification and implementation processes
• Defining an appropriate testing regime that satisfies both utility and supplier requirements
• Agreeing a suitable timeline for full CIM implementation and creating accountability for meeting this
• Understanding the nuances of supplier management of vendors versus consultants
• Determining the impact of effective supplier relationship management on your ability to accelerate full CIM implementation

• Getting up to speed with the variety of Interoperability testing (IOP) methods currently available on the market to best meet CIM end-user needs
• Determining appropriate metrics to quantify the success and validity of full CIM compatibility with internal and external systems
• Working hand in hand with vendors on how future testing tools can be designed to establish fully automated system testing procedures
• Evaluating the pros and cons of new testing methods such as harmonising IEC 61850 on the open FMB
• Measuring the impact of different testing methodologies on the successful implementation of CIM

• Preparing the business case for ESBs-CIM integration in terms of its impact on lifecycle management
• Effectively integrating IEC 61968 with IEC 61850 to maximise IT-OT interoperability
• Tackling organisational issues in terms of operation, maintenance and development of the ESBs to ensure seamless CIM compliance
• Developing the roadmap towards integrating additional substation data flows into ESBs to enhance CIM-ESB data exchange
• Highlighting the benefits of full ESB-CIM integration across all aspects of asset lifecycles

• Understanding how CIM is currently being integrated within a variety of protocols, including:
  – IEC 61850
  – IEC 104
  – IEC 103
• Determining the pros and cons of using each protocol when implementing CIM within existing systems, in terms of their reliability and security
• Establishing realistic time frames for full harmonisation of each protocol in the latest version of CIM
• Effectively configuring ICCP data flows with IEC 61850 and IEC 103 whilst ensuring CIM compliance
• Developing highly sophisticated gateway solutions between substations and external systems to establish enhanced real-time communication
• Measuring the long term benefits of full harmonisation of each protocol with CIM to drive greater operational efficiency

• Outlining the benefits of using CIM to model the electricity grid, and how this needs to connect with other domains such as GIS, Gas and Hydrogen as the grid evolves
• Accurately mapping modelling constructs  between UML and OWL
• Leveraging advanced OWL tools to establish complete semantic interoperability between standards, and how to publish alignment ontologies for reuse in the industry.
• Some tools that can help generating RDF from other data formats
• Defining realistic timelines to ensure the efficient integration of CIM with different standards
• Driving the need for developments of the CIM standard from a DSO perspective to ensure end-user needs are better met

During this 45-minute tutorial, delegates will get the opportunity to deep dive into how new open source tools are being developed to generate models for different simulation languages in order to support the full implementation of CIM. Opportunities will be highlighted in the context of the technical challenges that must be overcome in order for the utilities to reap the full benefits of their CIM package investments. Key topics that will be addressed include:

• How simulation modelling is being leveraged to accelerate the progression of CIM implementation
• Identifying challenges and gaps in CIM modelling and how these can become overcome
• Establishing ways that mapping can be used in the control room for a more dynamic analysis of the smart grid
• Determining the optimal timescale for applying a variety of open source systems and how this can help speed up the implementation of CIM

During this 45-minute tutorial, delegates will get the opportunity to deep dive into how CIM models can be integrated with internal systems and applications in order to support seamless data exchange between applications and CIM data base. Opportunities will be highlighted in the context of the technical challenges that must be overcome in order for the utilities to reap the full benefits of their CIM package investments. Key topics that will be addressed include:

• Relevant power flow data in CIM: how to find and get them
• Integrating multiple data bases into CIM to extract accurate grid models
• Leveraging advanced mapping tools to forecast planned switching events or generation as the grid evolves
• Applying optimisation, state estimation and congestion analysis using CIM databases
• Processing and exchanging data between TSOs and DSOs