Smart grid platform aims to speed up development with move to ‘open source’

Dutch distribution system operator Alliander is open sourcing its smart systems platform, formerly known as Open Smart Grid Platform, to speed up development. The system will now be known as Grid eXchange Fabric (GXF) and be developed through LF Energy.

Millions of distributed energy devices are now coming onto the electricity grid, each of which requires different tools and processes to ensure interoperability. GXF is a scalable and technology-agnostic industrial Internet of Things (IoT) platform that allows grid operators to collect data and monitor, control and manage smart devices on the grid. It will decrease the overall complexity and associated maintenance costs of accessing devices by creating a single generic method of abstracting data access.

LF Energy is a Linux Foundation project charged with using open source tech to accelerate decarbonisation in the energy and electricity sectors. It provides open frameworks and reference architectures.

Meanwhile, three other projects have been set in motion under the LF Energy umbrella to help use ‘open source’ technology and open standards to help  drive a smart energy system.

In the three new projects:

  • The Energy Market Methods Consortium is developing standardised methods, linked to open source code, to enable demand flexibility as a resource, supporting energy programmes and distributed energy resources  markets. It has three working groups: CalTRACK to standardise measurements of meter-based changes in consumption; GRID to provide methods for  relative impacts to load shape for claimable savings and forecasting net grid impacts; and SEAT, which leverages differential privacy to enable a range of data-driven policy and market-based use cases. 
  • The OpenEEmeter project is an open source engine that quantifies monthly, daily, and hourly changes in energy consumption, from behind-the-meter building interventions, to define consistent transactional units for distributed energy resources, ensure transparency, and provide a quantifiable standard for an ecosystem that enables markets for behind-the-meter flexibility as a resource. 
  • The Open Energy Data Initiative aims to improve and automate access to high-value energy (and related) datasets to make data actionable and discoverable by researchers and industry to accelerate analysis and advance innovation.

Further reading

Risk report: smart supply chains and personal data vulnerable to cyber attacks

WPD expects first tranche of digital network model to go live in 2020

12 interviews of Christmas: Polly Billington, UK100

Elexon proposes changes to streamline code change process

Open Networks consults on DSO flexibility markets

New ‘DSO entity’ will underpin Europe-wide standards, but UK will be a rule taker

 

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