Towards Cyber-Physical Cognition: A Unified Ontology-Driven Knowledge Graph for Real-Time Autonomous Grid Operations

Abstract

Modern power systems and smart grids are often composed of fragmented and heterogeneous data silos, which lack the cohesion needed for effective cross-domain analysis. For this, this paper introduces a universal ontology framework for the operational representation of intelligent cyber-physical power systems via a unified knowledge graph and an ontology capable of cross-domain reasoning. This work focuses on bridging cyber-physical simulators as a stepping stone towards that vision. By establishing a unified semantic middleware grounded in IEC 61970 (CIM) and IEC 62351/61850 standards, this framework integrates disparate cyber and physical simulation environments, illustrated via OMNeT++ and PowerWorld, into a single knowledge graph. Evaluation across three standard power system benchmarks demonstrates sub-linear scaling in both knowledge graph size and construction time. We further validate the framework's efficacy for real-time decision support, achieving millisecond-level query performance across both domains, maintained across six cumulative structural mutations to the knowledge graph. The resulting unified knowledge graph provides a robust, scalable information corpus for autonomous smart grid operations, enabling complex analysis of real-world power systems.