Description
GridIQ is a Fabric IQ ontology that explains the electric power system as one connected operating model: physical grid assets, operational telemetry, and electricity market outcomes.
The ontology starts with real-world grid entities such as substations, feeders, breakers, transformers, meters, loads, generators, solar plants, wind plants, batteries, and distributed energy resources. It then connects those assets to SCADA systems, measurements, control signals, and grid constraints. Finally, it shows how those same physical resources participate in electricity markets as registered resources that submit bids and offers, receive dispatch instructions, create schedules, and produce settlements and invoices.
The goal is not to reproduce the full IEC Common Information Model. Instead, GridIQ is a simplified, sense-making ontology inspired by publicly described IEC CIM concepts, especially grid operations and electricity market concepts. It is designed to help business users, operators, and AI agents understand how physical power-system entities, operational signals, and market outcomes relate to one another.
Why this ontology matters
Power systems are often modeled in disconnected layers: one layer for physical assets, another for SCADA and telemetry, and another for market participation, pricing, dispatch, and settlement. In the real world, these are not separate systems.
A battery is not just a physical asset connected to the grid. It may also be a controllable resource, a metered resource, a registered market resource, and a source of settlement charges or credits. A meter reading may support both operational visibility and financial settlement. A grid constraint may limit dispatch, influence clearing prices, and affect market outcomes.
GridIQ makes those connections visible. It gives humans and AI agents a shared language for reasoning across the physical, operational, and economic layers of the electric power system.
Clarity of concepts
The ontology uses a focused set of recognizable entities: substation, feeder, breaker, transformer, load, generator, battery storage, SCADA system, meter, measurement, registered resource, bid, offer, clearing price, dispatch instruction, schedule, settlement, and invoice.
These concepts are familiar to power-system, utility, and market stakeholders, but they are modeled in a simpler way so that someone without deep CIM expertise can still understand the story.
Useful relationships
The relationships explain how the system works, not just what objects exist.
Power flows through grid assets. SCADA monitors and controls operational equipment. Meters produce measurements and settlement quantities. Market participants own or operate registered resources. Registered resources submit bids and offers, receive dispatch instructions, follow schedules, and are settled using prices and metered quantities.
This makes the ontology useful for practical reasoning, such as:
- What physical asset does this market resource represent?
- Which meter supports settlement?
- Which price applied during this interval?
- Which grid constraint affected dispatch or clearing price?
- How does a physical grid condition flow through to a market outcome?
Real-world grounding
GridIQ is inspired by established utility and energy-market modeling concepts, including publicly described IEC CIM concepts such as IEC 61970-301 for grid operations and IEC 62325-301 for energy markets. However, it is intentionally smaller and easier to understand than a full technical standard implementation.
This design choice is deliberate. The contest is about sense-making, and GridIQ focuses on the core concepts and relationships needed to explain how electricity moves from physical infrastructure to operational decisions and market value.
The model separates the domain into three understandable layers:
- Physical Grid — the assets that generate, carry, transform, store, and consume electricity.
- Operations and Telemetry — the systems and signals that observe, measure, and control the grid.
- Markets and Value — the bids, offers, dispatch instructions, schedules, prices, settlements, and invoices that turn physical capability into economic outcomes.
The result is a compact ontology that helps people and AI agents reason over a complex energy system without needing to start from raw tables, isolated reports, or the full complexity of utility data standards.
GridIQ Ontology : Ontology Playground (Preview) | Interactive Ontology Explorer
