cimd

What is cimd?

cimd is a high-performance tool for working with CGMES (Common Grid Model Exchange Standard) data. It is a cross-platform solution to query, convert and merge equipment profiles.

Audience

Engineers, researchers, and advisors working with CGMES data who need better tooling than what TSOs currently provide.

Scope

cimd is a command line interface to (pre-)process CGMES data. This includes:

• converting grid models to JIIDM (iTesla);
• browsing grid models and navigating them interactively;

Future features we want to work on

• querying grid models;
• comparing two grid models and showing the difference;
• validating the grid model against Quality of CGMES Datasets and Calculations;
• merging grid models;

Benchmark

cimd is implemented from scratch in Zig and it’s so fast that it’s able to give you near-instant results. cimd parses unzipped CGMES profiles at a speed of 377MB/s on an M4 ARM chip.

cimd converts to JIIDM from zipped EQ files at 27MB/s on consumer hardware. For example, converting a real-world 4.8 MB zipped EQ file to JIIDM takes on average under 180ms, as measured on Apple M4 Pro.

As part of the cimd project, a 1GB data set was created to track performance improvements. Generate the GigaGrid data set to benchmark cimd yourself, or to benchmark other tooling.

cimd can be executed on Windows, MacOS and Linux on the commandline. Either to pre-process data for grid security analysis, or as a standalone tool to process data. The goal is to offer an efficient interface to CGMES for both humans and machines.

Learn more about cimd functionality.

Learn more about cimd architecture.

⚡ Watch the video

//TODO: record the video :^)

In the meantime, you can watch Andrew Kelley’s A Practical Guide to Applying Data-Oriented Design.

Or, for a more hands-on approach, see the quickstart guide.