IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2016 - 95

E
By Paul Skare,
Herbert Falk,
Mark Rice,
and Jens Winkel

EFFORTS ARE UNDERWAY TO COMBINE SMART GRID INFORMATION,
devices, networking, and emergency response information to create messages
that are not dependent on specific standards development organizations (SDOs).
This supports a future-proof approach of allowing changes in the canonical data
models (CDMs) going forward without having to perform forklift replacements
of solutions that use the messages. This also allows end users (electric utilities)
to upgrade individual components of a larger system while keeping the message
payload definitions intact. The goal is to enable public and private information
sharing securely in a standards-based approach that can be integrated into existing operations. We provide an example architecture that could benefit from this
multi-SDO, secure message approach. This article also describes how to improve
message security.
In working with a CDM such as the Common Information Model (CIM/IEC61968, IEC-61970, IEC-62325), it is important to understand why a single large
data model is not an option. We know the following two things: the scope of
everything we are interested in for the smart grid and the scope of the International Electrotechnical Commission's (IEC's) Technical Committee 57 (IEC
TC57), which developed the CIM. However, a Venn diagram of the two sets
would be very unequal. The larger circle, including everything we are interested
in, is split up by domain owners, that is to say, each SDO owns its own scope.
Finally, we have a long way to go to capture everything we need for smart grid
applications in the CIM. The grid is complicated!
The CIM Unified Markup Language (UML) has class definitions, system of
units definitions, and attribute definitions to reduce the chance that the model will
be misunderstood or misused. The experts in IEC TC57 who developed the CIM
were also developing large control system software projects with many million
lines of code. By developing software applications using the UML in which the
CIM is developed, a profile of attributes defining a message payload can be created, thereby ensuring that fields and attribute types match. The CIM allows creation of message payloads, XML schema definitions (XSDs) for databases, and
web service definition languages (WSDLs) to define web services. In contrast to
XML-based development where the data comes from multiple systems, CIMbased development has a much lower chance of nonmatching fields, fields with
different meanings, and mismatched unit or attribute types.
By its nature, UML is best suited for defining interfaces. The tool sets that support UML have expanded it to work for many other tasks. Since UML can allow
for a lot of variation, it is important to create consistency by defining naming and
design rules for a CDM. When combined with Ontology Web Language (OWL), a
profile can be defined and a test message can be created and verified with a round
trip message to ensure that the message remains unchanged.
UML can offer cybersecurity through definitions for users, companies, roles, consoles, and function authorities. This can allow for authentication, authorizations (e.g.,
viewability, controllability, and shareability by external entity), and separation of duties.
Additionally, the architecture of cyberphysical control system(s) can be defined. Newer
cybersecurity features include defining messages for topics that include information
sharing and situational awareness as defined in ES-C2M2, the Electricity Subsector
Cybersecurity Capability Maturity Model (http://energy.gov/oe/cybersecurity-capability-maturity-model-c2m2-program/electricity-subsector-cybersecurity). The U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE), in partnership with the Department of Homeland
Security and in collaboration with private- and public-sector experts, developed the
ES-C2M2 to support a White House initiative led by the DOE. The ES-C2M2 domains
can be important for emergency response, risk and vulnerability understanding, and
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPE.2015.2485899
Date of publication: 30 December 2015

january/february 2016

ieee power & energy magazine

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http://www.energy.gov/oe/cybersecurity-capa
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - January/February 2016
