OperatorFabric is a modular, extensible, industrial-strength, and field-tested platform for systems operators. OperatorFabric includes several features essential for electricity, water, and other utility operations. The project has just been updated to version 3.10.0 with a number of bug fixes and new features.

Migration from 3.9.x

See Migration Guide from release 3.9.x to release 3.10.0

Features

• #3357 : Add spinner when changing connected entities in activity area screen
• #3349 : Add a spinner when delete a card if slow network
• #3347 : Add a spinner when logout is slow
• #3149 : Show entities concerned by card in footer
• #3328 : Settings screen configuration : move “settings.infos.hide” section to ”settingsScreen.hiddenSettings”
• #3383 : Permit to select more than one entity if possible when sending a response card
• #3310, #3405 : Provide shared css/js to external applications
• #3408 : User cards: Permit to add a list of recipients via the template & user choice
• #3452 : Add hover and zoom-to-card on the geomap function
• #3486 : Add remote logs for debugging purpose
• #1328 : Prevent the removal of the administration group for the admin user
• #3299 : Regularly try to reconnect disconnected external devices
• #3234, #3543 : Refuse sending card if process or state does not exist (feature can be desactivate by configuration)
• #3331 : Add a possibility to have non filterable notifications
• #1318 : Resource identifiers should only contain letters, digits, dashes or underscores
• #3503 : Add export feature for admin screens
• #3450 : Geographical map: add a optional chart to display number of cards by severity
• #3545 : Add a possibility to not close card when user acknowledge
• #3534 : Administration screen : Add in groups popup the list of members
• #3544 : Add the possibility to hide edit or delete card link
• #3565 : Add option to sort cards by start and end date
• #3589 : Add logs when user ack/read/unack/unread
• #3570 : Set default feed filtering and sorting values in web-ui.json
• #3595 : Add methods for templates to set selected values and options list in multiselect component
• #3566 : Add setting to automatically open the first card in list
• #3603 : Administration screen : Add in entity popup the list of members
• #3623 : Feed filters : red color for the icon in case filtering is activated

Bugs

• #3370 : Feed light card : words are cut in summary text
• #3169 : Redirection to the feed when editing a card from monitoring/agenda
• #3369 : Cursor is not valid in monitoring table when going over the table rows
• #3355 : Group administration : bad display of TYPE single-select
• #3361 : Admin checkbox : mouseover text overflows the screen
• #3172 : Checkboxes can be checked even outside the text
• #3306 : Remove settings value playSoundOnExternalDevice when removing user link to external device
• #3371 : Cursor not valid in << and >> (monitoring screen and feed when timeline is hidden)
• #3367 : Cursor for “Acknowledge all cards” link is not the good one
• #3368 : Feed : “Reset all filters” link is clickable on more than just the text
• #3350 : Spinner too small when we send a usercard
• #3422 : Not using default sound settings defined in web-ui.json when user has no settings
• #3374 : Bad display of “Response closed” dutch version
• #3435 : Unused fields in request when update/create a perimeter via admin UI
• #3372 : Send HTTP error 500 when external application endpoint is not found
• #3362 : Spinner for loading opfab : use shared spinner component
• #3466 : Group/entity/perimeter creation : some special characters in id field are not forbidden
• #3353 : Logout with slow network show “session expired” popup
• #2998 : No sound on Firefox after closing and reopening the browser
• #3471 : Migration script to opfab 3 : special characters not well translated
• #3488 : Fix pinned cards display for long titles
• #3176 : Updates for users/entities/groups should be sent to components that need it
• #3512 : Realtime screen bug when a connected user has no entity
• #3562 : Admin screens: do not cut long values for ID column

Tasks

• #3327 : Move the about configuration away from settings in web-ui.json
• #3430 : Update dependency chart.js to v3.8.2
• #3320 : Remove unecessary error management in ui
• #3487 : Reduce space between reponse and ack icons in feed

More information is available on GitHub.

This post was contributed by Jonas van den Bogaard of LF Energy member Alliander.

Céad mile fáilte! – One hundred thousand welcomes in old Irish. With that sentence, Hilary Carter from the Linux Foundation Research started her keynote where she presented the outcomes of the World of Open Source: Europe Spotlight 2022 research report.

An LF Energy delegation attended the recent Open Source Summit Europe in Dublin, Ireland! The delegation consisted of open source community leaders from RTE, PIONIX, and Alliander.  Open Source Summit Europe brings together open source developers, technologists, and community leaders from around the world to collaborate, share information, solve problems and gain knowledge, furthering open source innovation and ensuring a sustainable open source ecosystem.

At most Open Source Summits important announcements are made. This time there were two: The transfer of PyTorch from Meta to Linux Foundation and the announcement of Linux Foundation Europe.

PyTorch is an open source machine learning framework that was developed by Meta. The Open Source community of PyTorch has more than 2,000 contributors. By bringing PyTorch to the Linux Foundation, Meta wants to give the open source community a boost and place the project under a neutral ecosystem.

The second announcement concerns Linux Foundation Europe. The goal of Linux Foundation Europe is to create a neutral governance entity in Europe. Currently, it is difficult for some organizations in Europe to join the Linux Foundation because Linux Foundation is an American governance entity. The hope is Linux Foundation Europe will remove this barrier and accelerate open source adoption within Europe. For European organizations that are already a member of the Linux Foundation, participation in Linux Foundation Europe is free. The first project that will be hosted at the Linux Foundation Europe is OpenWallet, which is an open source alternative to your Apple Wallet and Android Wallet, among others, and can provide a general basis for building new digital wallets.

Besides important announcements, the summit is also famous for its many presentations. The topics of these presentations range from security to OPSOs to emerging open source technologies and more.

Also, there were no less than three presentations related to open source for power system sector, which were made possible by the LF Energy delegation. The topics of these presentations were:

How Open Source Helps a Grid Operator with the Challenges of the Energy Transition – Jonas van den Bogaard & Nico Rikken, Alliander

The energy transition poses new challenges to all parties in the energy sector. For grid operators, the rise in renewable energy and the electrification of energy consumption drives the grid to its limits. By using open source, participating in open source projects, open sourcing internal projects like OpenSTEF and Power Grid Model, and being a member of LF Energy, the Dutch grid operator Alliander aims to unleash the power of open source collaboration to further the energy transition. OpenSTEF provides a complete software stack that forecasts the load on the electricity grid for the next hours to days. Given a time series of measured load or generation, a fully automated machine learning pipeline is executed which delivers a probabilistic forecast of future load. Power Grid Model is a Python library for steady-state distribution power system analysis. Currently, it supports the following calculations: 1) symmetric and asymmetric power flow calculation with Newton-Raphson method and linear method, and 2) symmetric and asymmetric state estimation with an iterative linear method. This talk explored the OpenSTEF project and Power Grid Model project, and how these projects support the adoption of renewable energy in the Netherlands.

Open Source Enables Power Grid Management Architecture by Lucian Balea & Benoit Jeanson, RTE

Since the launch of the Linux Foundation Energy, an ecosystem of industrial projects has been growing. From isolated projects held by isolated companies, a set of connected solutions is now emerging for some fields. In particular, for grid management, it is now possible to draw a fully connected net of open source tools from the inner workings of the power grid substation to the control room, from the configuration of real-time devices to operational decision-making support. This talk showed a journey through this architecture of real industrial-grade projects that is currently being implemented at RTE, the power transmission system operator in France, to enable the adaptation of core-business operational processes to the energy transition. It also presented how open source communities in other domains (edge, cloud-native, virtualization, embedded and real-time Linux) allowed the stunning rise of this wide range of solutions in only a few years. This journey is also evidence of how open source could be leveraged within a specific industry vertical to boost innovation.

Technical Introduction to Everest: Open Source Firmware for EV Charging Stations – Kai-Uwe Hermann & Piet Gömpel, PIONIX

This presentation introduced EVerest, an open source software stack for electric vehicle charging infrastructure, with specific examples of usage and integration into large-scale solutions. EVerest was designed with modularity and customizability in mind. It consists of a framework for configuring multiple interchangeable modules that are coupled via MQTT. By abstracting standards and use cases, EVerest runs on any Linux device without major customization efforts, from AC home chargers to DC public charging stations. In addition to communicating with vehicles using ISO15118 and EN61851, EVerest plans to integrate further communication such as ChaDeMo as well as supporting cloud-based management solutions, energy management including openADR and USEF, PV integration, and grid friendliness. A feature-complete OCPP cloud connectivity stack is already included. EVerest is an Apache2.0 licensed project within LF Energy. It was initiated by PIONIX GmbH to support the electrification of the mobility sector.

Video recordings of all Open Source Summit Europe sessions will be available in the coming weeks on YouTube.

To summarize, the summit was a great opportunity for the LF Energy delegation to meet each other in person, gain knowledge from the open source community and create awareness around LF Energy and the LF Energy projects.

One of the biggest obstacles to mass adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is a lack of compatibility and plug & play capabilities. The LF Energy EVerest project aims to tackle this challenge and others related to EV charging globally. By utilizing a “code first” approach, the project aims to increase innovation tenfold in the EV sector.

EVerest wants to aid the move away from an overabundance of standards and instead utilize an open source base structure, essentially becoming the Android of electromobility and bridge the compatibility-gap between the many different vehicle and charger producers. The aim of EVerest is to impact all types of charging:

• Fast public charging
• Smart charging such as using solar energy to charge at home
• DC charging
• Bi-directional charging and emergency energy backups for electric blackouts

Additionally, using EVerest will reduce CO2, as development and volume rollout can be accomplished much faster, using fewer resources and avoiding stranded assets.

The project originated with Marco Möller and his team at PIONIX, but the idea of EVerest was sparked by one of PIONIX’s previous consulting projects, where they realized how behind the times and overly complex the EV industry is. Similar circumstances had appeared during PIONIX’s previous MAVinci project, which had to do with surveying drones. 

In the case of MAVinci, the open source community took over and ensured code sharing and compatibility. After developing an open source code base, everyone was then able to concentrate on their specific goals and USPs, since flying the drones itself was solved. That’s what the EVerest project community wants to repeat.

Both PIONIX as a startup and EVerest as a project have been growing rapidly. To date, there have been some large code donations from the corporate side and others are planned, but more community involvement is needed. The project is looking to onboard more contributors and better documentation is a key factor of achieving this. The technical steering committee (TSC) is working on scaling up a documentation team parallel to the development team. At the same time, many commercial projects are already adopting EVerest in the background, with the existing open source project community supporting them as much as possible. This includes new commercial projects like Texas Instruments, PHYTEC, chargebyte and chargeBIG by MAHLE.

“As commercial adoption continues to grow, many industry players are discovering significant overlap between their commercial projects, which is one of the benefits of working with an open source community,” said Marco. “LF Energy has been a huge benefit in supporting the EVerest community with knowledge of open source best practices, legal and marketing support, as well as many exciting networking opportunities in the energy industry.”

The EVerest team recently hosted an ‘academia kickoff’ event where they presented details of the project to researchers around the globe, and invited them to participate and begin using EVerest within their research projects. The development team also has a laundry list of ideas for dealing with different types of default hardware, and in expanding the use of the project into home and local energy management. 

Those interested in participating in the EVerest community should review the project site and documentation, follow the project on GitHub, and subscribe to the project mailing list.

The transition to green energy will be propelled by digital technologies, but are all the stakeholders ready, and what do they need to do to get there? To make progress, one must first identify where stakeholders are, what’s lacking, what’s preventing it, and what assistance organizations believe they require to move ahead.

LF Energy, in collaboration with Linux Foundation Research and LF Training & Certification, and partners Global Power System Transformation Consortium (G-PST), RWTH Aachen, and Zpryme, seeks to address how we can accelerate collaboration among generation owners, distributors, transmission operators, and retailers. Topics covered in this research will include:

• What is the degree of preparedness for power system stakeholders, particularly system operators, in their journey to a green energy shift utilizing digital technologies, such as open source ones?

• What gaps in knowledge exist for educational training and human resource development programs on grid digitization and transformation?

• How can we inform best practices and influence both contribution and adoption of open source technology stacks vital to achieving climate targets?

Modern digital substations now need more computers to manage a greater number of field devices and apps and a higher level of automation. Are energy providers ready and able to convert their demand and supply management systems to take advantage of greener choices while also digitizing their infrastructure?

Perhaps most importantly, what are the gaps in skill sets, mindsets, and technologies needed to drive the energy transition?

These are insights we hope to uncover with this survey. As with everything, we do more—faster and better—if we do it together. 

The world’s fate depends on a successful transition to clean energy; we are all invested in the energy transition and the need to move faster. The targets for transforming the power system will not be met at the current speed. Renewable energy and electric vehicle production are causing power supply and demand fluctuations.

Everyone counts, and your contribution is critical, and we need your participation to make informed decisions going forward.

We invite all energy stakeholders, including utilities, traditional suppliers, OEMs, government agencies and standards bodies, the energy, technological, venture capital industries, NGOs, and industry communities, to participate.

Please take the time to complete this survey to share your experience and help us determine the most important priorities moving forward.

BONUS

As a thank you for participating in this research, once you have completed the survey, a code will be displayed on the confirmation page, which can be used for a 25% discount on any Linux Foundation training course or certification exam listed in our catalog*.

*Some restrictions apply. 

PRIVACY

Your name and company name will not be displayed. Reviews are attributed to your role, company size, and industry. Responses will be subject to the Linux Foundation’s Privacy Policy, available at https://linuxfoundation.org/privacy. Please note that members of the LF Energy survey committee who are not LF employees will review the survey results. If you do not want them to have access to your name or email address in connection with the survey, please do not provide your name or email address.

VISIBILITY

We will summarize the survey data and share the learnings later this year on the LF Energy website. In addition, we will produce an in-depth survey report which will be shared with all survey participants.

ABOUT LF Energy

LF Energy is an open source foundation focused on the power systems sector, hosted within The Linux Foundation. LF Energy provides a neutral, collaborative community to build the shared digital investments that will transform the world’s relationship to energy. LF Energy leverages transparent, open source development best practices and existing and emerging standards to efficiently scale, modernize and digitally transform the power systems sector. By providing frameworks and reference architectures, LF Energy minimizes toil. It alleviates pain points such as cybersecurity, interoperability, control, automation, virtualization, flexibility, digital orchestration, and balancing supply and demand.

LF Energy’s SOGNO project – which means “dream” in Italian and stands for “Service-based Open-source Grid automation platform for Network Operation” – is intended to accelerate the transition of energy production based on fossil fuels to more decentralized energy sources and storage devices that are integrated into power systems. Decentralized energy production can complicate the balance between production and consumption since you need to manage many small production units instead of a few bulk units. That is why future power systems require a larger degree of automation than legacy ones, with software systems ready to support that automation. Not only does this new generation of power system automation software need to process a larger amount of data, but it also needs to deal with a more heterogeneous ecosystem of devices communicating to the automation system than in the past. 

The goal of SOGNO, which was originally started at RWTH Aachen University’s Institute for Automation of Complex Power Systems, is to provide a modular software solution for power system automation that is easily extendable and that matches the speed at which new types of devices are being connected to the power system. SOGNO takes advantage of cloud and virtualization technologies to scale up with the number of connected devices.

Markus Mirz, Chief Engineer at Fraunhofer Digital Energy and Technical Lead of the SOGNO project, was part of the European H2020 project at RWTH Aachen, which laid the foundation for SOGNO. Markus originally got involved as he appreciates the idea of contributing back to society. He helped bring SOGNO into LF Energy as he saw it as a great way to ensure the future development of the project, and to connect with the larger open source community. While the initial version of SOGNO was the outcome of a single research project, it is now used in many research projects by various contributors and end users.

“I and other contributors have appreciated the opportunity being part of the LF Energy community has provided in terms of enabling collaboration and exchange of ideas with other developers,” said Markus. “Another benefit of hosting the project in LFE is the support with marketing and other activities that are outside of the comfort zone of many developers, like legal questions that you should address when setting up a project.”

The German government recently recognized Antonello Monti of RWTH Aachen for his work creating SOGNO and the great contribution it is making to the transformation of the energy system towards climate neutrality with the innovation prize of North Rhine-Westphalia. Awarded annually, this prize recognizes outstanding achievements and excellent research. Part of the reason Antonello was selected for this award was the appeal of supporting the energy transformation through software. Building new infrastructure is not only very costly but can be very time consuming because you need to ensure that building projects are accepted by local communities; software projects like SOGNO make a difference with a smaller initial cost.

SOGNO has recently received its first requests and contributions from the broader industry, which is a fantastic development, but challenges remain. Most importantly, more contributors are needed to join the project and provide both code and documentation. While the community has stepped up and organized some introductory informational and training sessions, more is always needed to help SOGNO achieve its full potential. 

Together with a system operator in Italy, Markus and the rest of the SOGNO community are working on a first production deployment based on SOGNO. The results of this deployment should provide valuable insight into the effectiveness of the software, as well as into what additional features are needed to help it continue to grow.

Those interested in participating in the SOGNO community should review the project site and Wiki, follow the project on GitHub, and subscribe to the project mailing list.

Open Source Summit Europe takes place September 12-16, 2022 in Dublin, Ireland. This is the premier event for open source developers, technologists, and community leaders to collaborate, share information, solve problems and gain knowledge, furthering open source innovation and ensuring a sustainable open source ecosystem. It is the gathering place for open source code and community contributors.

Two founding strategic member organizations of LF Energy will present sessions focused on how open source is making the energy transition faster and more efficient:

How Open Source Helps a Grid Operator with the Challenges of the Energy Transition – Wednesday, September 14 • 15:15 – 15:55

Jonas van den Bogaard & Nico Rikken, Alliander N.V.

The energy transition poses new challenges to all parties in the energy sector. For grid operators, the rise in renewable energy and the electrification of energy consumption drives the grid to its limits. By using open source, participating in Open Source projects, Open Sourcing internal projects like OpenSTEF and Power Grid model, and being a member of LF Energy, the Dutch Grid Operator Alliander aims to unleash the power of open source collaboration to further the energy transition. OpenSTEF provides a complete software stack that forecasts the load on the electricity grid for the next hours to days. Given a time series of measured load or generation, a fully automated machine learning pipeline is executed which delivers a probabilistic forecast of future load. Power-grid-model is a Python library for steady-state distribution power system analysis. Currently, it supports the following calculations: 1) Symmetric and asymmetric power flow calculation with Newton-Raphson method and linear method, and 2) Symmetric and asymmetric state estimation with an iterative linear method. In this talk, we will tell you more about the OpenSTEF project and Power Grid Model project, and how these projects support the adoption of renewable energy in the Netherlands.

Open Source Enabled Power Grid Management Architecture – Friday, September 16 • 13:55 – 14:35

Lucian Balea & Benoît Jeanson, RTE

Since the launch of the Linux Foundation Energy, an ecosystem of industrial projects has been growing. From isolated projects held by isolated companies, a set of connected solutions is now emerging for some fields. In particular for the grid management, it is now possible to draw a fully connected net of open source tools from the inner of the power grid substation to the control room, from the configuration of real time devices to operational decision making supports. We will show a journey through this architecture of real industrial-grade projects that is currently being implemented at RTE, the power transmission system operator in France, to enable the adaptation of core-business operational processes to the energy transition. We will also present how open source communities in other domains (edge, cloud-native, virtualization, embedded and real-time Linux) allowed the stunning rise of this wide range of solutions in only a few years. This journey is also an evidence of how open source could be leveraged within a specific industry vertical to boost innovation.

Those not already registered to attend Open Source Summit Europe may do so here. Both in person and virtual registration options are available.

OperatorFabric 3.9.2.RELEASE is now available.
 
This patch fixes a bug concerning the configuration of the default locale. You can see our release note on github.