About

GRIDS – Grid Reliability Initiative utilizing Data Standardization

The GRIDS project is focused on techniques to increase grid reliability and resilience by improving interoperability between transmission and distribution, and standardizing data exchanges with devices connected to the grid edge, from smart inverters to the largest data centers.

Grid-ION

The Grid-ION application is planned to resolve the data fragmentation problem experienced by distribution electric utilities and other energy stakeholders when they set out to design and document towards architecting solutions for grid-edge resource coordination. This application sits at the semantic layer of the grid’s digital stack and helps define and create, for a given business use-case such as a customer program or large flexible load interconnection, what information needs to be identified and exchanged in which format and between who, why, and when. The application also seeks to standardize the vocabulary used to define the data objects embedded in the information exchanges, leveraging the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) Common Information Model (CIM) library, thereby enabling interoperability of operational data. Grid-ION leverages ORNL’s standards landscape work, the concepts developed within the Grid Modernization Initiative (GMI) Assessment of the Communication Architecture for Energy Systems (ACAES) project led by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), the IEC Interface Reference Model (IRM), PNNL’s varied efforts in the data flow analysis (GDTAF) and semantic interoperability space, and Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI’s TSO-DSO coordination framework development activities).

Related Material

1. S. Chinthavali et al. “Electric Utility Communications Standards Landscape 2025 Edition,” ORNL Technical Report, November 2025.
2. A. Sundararajan et al. “Modeling Grid Data Flows for Transmission and Distribution Operations: Review, Design, Next Steps,” IEEE Resilience Week, December 2024, Austin TX, USA. Available here.

Disclaimer: Grid-ION’s intellectual property is protected by UT-Battelle. This research work is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity. This research has been authored by UTBattelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE). The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan.

Large Flexible Loads Economic Analysis

Details coming soon.