Common Information Model

CIM data exchanges

The integration of renewable energy sources (RES), which is a major target of the EU’s energy and climate policy objectives for 2020 and beyond, will affect existing electricity grid infrastructure, operations and the functioning of the electricity market itself. The integration of renewables into the power system requires for their intermittency to be balanced. This can be tackled by electricity grids operating smartly and cost-efficiently. To do this, a seamless and efficient information exchange is necessary at various stages, between an increasing number of companies – TSOs, DSOs, generators, etc.

Such information exchanges have become indispensable in network planning (HVDC network development, interconnection development to tackle congestions, etc), power system operation (real-time information on the generation output, balancing control, etc.), market (generation schedules, trades, balancing resource management, etc.).

Data exchanges for studies such as the Ten-Year Network Development Plan (TYNDP) and Regional Investment Plans demand a high degree of coordination and consistency. Various types of data are also required for other common TSO studies and the network codes’ common grid models exchanges.

All these require for TSOs, third parties and service providers to use commonly agreed and compatible data exchange formats, in our case standards based on the International Electrotechnical Commission’s (IEC) Common Information Model (CIM).

Data exchange standardization

To ensure that the IEC CIM standards are developed in line with TSO requirements, ENTSO-E established liaisons with IEC TC 57/WG13 (the working group dealing with Energy management system application program interface) and IEC TC57/WG16 (the working group responsible for Deregulated energy market communications).

In addition, ENTSO-E is actively cooperating with the CIM Users Group and UCAI Users Group to exchange information within the CIM community.

The CIM standards are continuously evolving to meet the changing requirements for data exchange, which are increasing in both frequency and type, with higher RES integration and the introduction of smart grids.To speed up the standardisation work to meet ENTSO-E requirement that address the relevant rules and the aggregated requirement from all member TSOs, ENTSO-E is leading the development of IEC Technical Specification (TS) that will be a basis for future International Standards (IS)

ESMP library CGMES library

ENTSO-E runs interoperability tests on a yearly basis to demonstrate the interoperability of its CIM based data exchange specifications and the IEC standards, and to support CIM development for both grid models and market exchanges. The experience gained from developing and implementing the standard directly contributes to future network code development as data exchange processes are part of several network codes.

ENTSO-E also lead the development or relevant test model that is used in the IOP and Conformity Assessment. The IOPs may have different focus depending on that stage of the development. The stages are:

Validate that the proposed specification meet the requirements
Verify the specification through the development and validation of the test models
Verify the test model thought the demonstration of tool support

For any further questions on ENTSO-E CIM or data exchange related issues, please contact the ENTSO-E Secretariat at cim@entsoe.eu

CIM Profiling tools

CimConteXtor and CimSyntaxGen were originally developed at Zamiren by Sébastien Maligue-Clausse, André Maizener and Jean-Luc Sanson and distributed under CeCILL-B open-source license.

ENTSO-E contributed expanding CimConteXtor and CimSyntaxGen and publishes them under the Apache 2.0 license http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 on the ENTSO-E website. The open-source tool development is under governance of the CIM Profiling Tools Governance Group, under the CIM Working Group and itself under the ICT Committe at ENTSO-E.

Users can download the last version of the CimConteXtor and CimSyntaxGen tools and refer to the documentation manuals in the section down below.

License

Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements.

See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.

The ASF licenses this file to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Notice

Downloads

ICTC approved on 20 March 2025

CimConteXtor v3.2.5 CimSyntaxGen v4.0.15

CIM Validation tools

CIM Desk

CIM data engineering solution kit (CIMdesk) was developed by Power Info LCC under a contract with UCTE. With the creation of ENTSO-E, the contract agreement was transferred to ENTSO-E.

CIMdesk is designed to provide an integrated data engineering environment in support of CIM-based model exchange. It was built on the top of CIMSpy Enterprise Edition (CIMSpy EE). Specifically, CIMdesk was customized to support ENTSO-E Common Grid Model Exchange Standard (CGMES) as well as the CIM profiles developed to govern CGMES-based model exchanges. The following list summarizes some of the key features of CIMdesk. To learn how to use the tool, please check CIMdesk User’s Guide

CIMdesk is available to all ENTSO-E members - unlimited number of users/installations. Costs for CIMdesk maintenance are covered by ENTSO-E.

CIMdesk is also available to vendors. However, the type of licence and respective price should be negotiated with Power Info LCC. Vendors should be advised to contact directly Power Info LCC.

CIMdesk is primarily used for validation of the instance data which complies with CGMES.

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