The Common Electric Power Transmission System Model (CTM) is an intuitive, extensible, language-agnostic, and range-validating spefication of electric power network components' parameter names and units, and the relation between components, intended for use by the research community developing new computational methods for power systems operations and simulation.
Power system datasets following the CTM specification can be read as dictionaries and manipulated in that form in most languages, e.g., in Python we can check the first bus parameters using:
import json
with open('path/to/ctm_instance.json', 'r') as f:
ps = json.load(f)
print(ps["network"]["bus"][0])whereas in Julia, the same operation can be done as:
using JSON
ps = JSON.parsefile("path/to/ctm_instance.json")
@show ps["network"]["bus"][0]This standard data structure in CTM makes it easy to work in multiple power systems domains (e.g., economic operation, reliability assessment, electricity markets, stability assessment, etc.) without requiring conversions between use-case-specific file formats and data structures with information loss in the process.
This repository specifies CTM as a JSON Schema, provides documentation, derivated (code-generated) implementations of CTM, and example data and usage of the schema for important use cases.
The repository directories are organized as follows:
json_schemas: contains the JSON Schema specification for CTM.generated: contains class definitions code-generated from the CTM JSON Schema. The purpose of these classes is to parse and manage CTM datasets in multiple programming languages.documentation: contains code-generated HTML documentation for the CTM JSON Schema.examples: contains example datasets in CTM JSON Schema compliant format and example scripts that use CTM for important use cases.
Contributing to CTM is easy: send us a pull
request. When you send your request, make
main the destination branch.
CTM is a project currently under development. See our development roadmap for details and contact the authors below if you would like to get involved in planning and future releases.
The CTM authors started on this initiative in 2019, prompted by an uptick in new power system modeling tools, each of which is using a different subset of the system parameters and specifying its input on a different format. In 2023, this effort was reinvigorated by US DOE-sponsored projects requiring multiple tools providing a common interface to access them, leading to the translation of the initial specification to JSON and its expansion to cover use cases beyond power flow and optimal power flow
The CTM specification in this repository was written by Ignacio Aravena (LLNL, aravenasolis1@llnl.gov), building on the initial CTM effort led by Carleton Coffrin (LANL), with contributions from Clayton Barrows (NREL), Ray D. Zimmerman (Cornell), and others.
CTM is distributed under the terms of both the MIT license. See LICENSE for details. All new contributions must be made under the MIT license.
This CTM specification has been developed with the support of the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Electricty, Transmission Reliability and Resilience Program and the North American Energy Resilience Model (NAERM).
LLNL-CODE-865934