Linux Foundation Energy Announces New Open Source Initiatives for Substation Digitalization, Energy AI and Data, and More

Ahead of energy policy and EV charging events in May, LF Energy expands its project and working group portfolio to address challenges in the energy transition

SAN FRANCISCO – April 16, 2024 – LF Energy, the open source foundation focused on harnessing the power of collaborative software and hardware technologies to accelerate the energy transition, is pleased to announce that four new open source technical projects and three new working groups have been accepted into the foundation. These initiatives will provide the energy sector with new resources around digital substations, preparing for extreme weather events, taking advantage of advances in data and AI technologies, and more. This comes ahead of the Open Sustainability Policy Summit and Open EV Charging Summit, both of which LF Energy is hosting with partners in May.

Four New Open Source Projects

The LF Energy Technical Advisory Council has voted to accept four new projects into the foundation. Two of these projects are focused on making better use of open data to address challenges in the energy transition, while the other two will help with modeling for extreme weather events, and digital substations. The addition of these projects further strengthens LF Energy’s overall tech stack, and provides additional open source resources for energy stakeholders looking to transition to renewables. The new projects are:

• covXtreme is a model and software for hazard risk analysis of extreme events. covXtreme estimates penalized piecewise constant covariate marginal and conditional extreme value models, and allows environmental contour estimation. covXtreme was contributed to LF Energy by Shell.

• NODE (National Open Data for Electrification) Collective is dedicated to sourcing, structuring, and maintaining comprehensive data on every residential incentive program in the U.S. The community has already amassed the most complete, well-structured, accurate set of incentive data in the U.S., as well as developed the tools to enlist a broad coalition in this effort moving forward. NODE Collective was contributed to LF Energy by Eli Technologies, the Building Decarbonization Coalition, Rewiring America, RMI (founded as Rocky Mountain Institute), and the North Carolina Clean Energy Technology Center.

• OpenSCD is a comprehensive configuration platform for fully digital substations. From communication design, configuration, and commissioning; through to modeling, monitoring, maintenance and replacement, OpenSCD offers a universal tool built on industry standards. OpenSCD was contributed to LF Energy by Alliander, Omicron, RTE, Sprinteins, Transnet, and Transpower.

• OpenSynth is a new, global open community designed to democratize synthetic data, to accelerate the decarbonization of global energy systems. The project will enable holders of raw smart meter (i.e. demand) data to generate and share synthetic data and models that can be used by researchers, industry innovators and policymakers. OpenSynth was contributed to LF Energy by the Centre for Net Zero, powered by Octopus Energy.

Three New Working Groups

LF Energy hosts working groups, which bring together communities of disparate stakeholders to identify challenges and develop open source solutions for the energy transition. Working groups may result in the creation of new technical projects, standards, documentation, best practices, or other deliverables to benefit the industry. The three new working groups are:

• Digital Substation Automation Systems (DSAS) Initiative seeks to optimize digital substations through open source technology and provides a collaboration platform for projects working on digital substations. LF Energy hosts four technical projects (CoMPAS, FledgePOWER, OpenSCD, and SEAPATH) focused on digital substations, and the mission of this working group is to improve collaboration and interoperability between these projects.

• LF Energy AI is a Special Interest Group created to drive AI for energy priorities forward. The potential of AI relies heavily on access to data, and much of the granular data in energy involves some degree of privacy, confidentiality, cybersecurity, and critical infrastructure protection issues. Open innovation and collaboration in this area will bring new solutions such as synthetic data generation based on real datasets, privacy-preserving techniques, and more.

• Open Renewable Energy Systems (ORES) aims to revolutionize the residential renewable energy sector by developing an open standard architecture, APIs, and protocols, fostering innovation, accessibility, and sustainability.

Upcoming Events

LF Energy is organizing three upcoming events to gather various groups of energy stakeholders to learn and share best practices and open source solutions for the energy transition. These events include:

• The Open Sustainability Policy Summit - May 2-3, Washington, DC. This free event, hosted by Johns Hopkins University, will gather lawmakers, policymakers, electrical utility companies, automakers, technology vendors, researchers, and end users of energy to discuss the challenges and opportunities for an open source model of building both technology and standards to drive the energy transition, with particular focus on how policy and regulation can support this collaborative approach and ensure communities are diverse and inclusive. Registration is open.

• The Open EV Charging Summit - May 15-16, Dallas, TX. This free event, hosted by Texas Instruments, will explore open source technology as a solution for EV charging reliability, efficiency, and interoperability. One day will be dedicated to technical sessions with experts from the EV charging industry, while the second day will offer the opportunity to participate in testing and demonstrations of different EV charging equipment that utilize open source solutions. The event will gather experts from the energy, automotive and charging industries, along with researchers, regulators, and policymakers, to discuss how to speed deployment of reliable charging infrastructure nationally and internationally. Registration is open.

• LF Energy Summit - September 5-6, Brussels, Belgium. The only way to meet decarbonization targets is to work collaboratively to develop digital technologies and standards to optimize physical infrastructure, orchestrate supply and demand, and rapidly onboard clean energy resources. LF Energy accelerates the energy transition by building communities to develop open technologies and standards. LF Energy Summit will gather the LF Energy community, including electric utilities, technology vendors, global energy companies, researchers, and other industry stakeholders, to learn about LF Energy and its projects, collaborate, and share best practices. The Call for Proposals is open through May 19. Sponsorship packages are also available.

Members of the media who wish to request media passes for any of these events can contact pr@lfenergy.org. 

Additionally, LF Energy Executive Director Alex Thornton will present a session at the upcoming IEEE PES T&D Conference on May 8 in Anaheim, CA, titled “Accelerating grid modernization with open technology and standards”.

LF Energy Releases First Annual Report

For the first time, LF Energy has released an annual report, providing detailed insight into the progress made in 2023 in pursuit of its mission to create a technology ecosystem that enables decarbonization of the energy sector through innovation and interoperability. 2023 saw tremendous growth for LF Energy, with nine new projects added to bring the total to 30. Nine new members also joined, contributor strength grew by 30%, and lines of code hosted grew by 22%. The EVerest and SEAPATH projects graduated to the Early Adoption phase, in addition to hosted projects across the board seeing rapid growth in deployments. 

Download the full report to learn more.

LF Energy Partners with CRESYM to Enhance Digitalization of Energy Systems Through Open Source

LF Energy has joined forces with CRESYM to accelerate and support the development of open source technologies to enhance the digitalization of energy systems. CRESYM is a non-profit association, gathering industrial and academic research organizations and aiming at solving the coming challenges for the future, fast-evolving European energy system. 

The partnership will build on the strengths of both organizations. CRESYM will continue to focus on the creation of new, innovative research projects to drive digital transformation in the energy sector. LF Energy’s expertise lies in its knowledge and expertise in building sustainable open source projects and communities to support them. LF Energy is now the preferred organization for hosting CRESYM’s research projects when they reach an appropriate stage to enhance their technology readiness levels further and develop them as open source tools. 

OwnTech Joins LF Energy

LF Energy recently welcomed OwnTech, a non-profit organization that changes the user experience in power electronics through an open source technology suite, as an Associate Member. 

“We are pleased to see support for open source software, hardware, and standards growing to drive the energy transition forward,” said LF Energy Executive Director Alex Thornton. “It is essential that all stakeholders work together collaboratively to advance these solutions so the energy sector can digitalize and decarbonize. I encourage anyone interested to get involved, whether that is by contributing new projects or code to existing projects, joining us as a member, or attending one of our upcoming events.”

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About LF Energy

A first-of-its-kind initiative, LF Energy provides a 21st century plan of action to solve climate change through open frameworks, reference architectures and a support ecosystem of complementary projects. Strategic Members include Alliander, Google, Microsoft, RTE and Shell, in addition to over 60 General and Associate Members from across the energy industry, technology, academia, and government. Find further information here: https://www.lfenergy.org