Linux Foundation Energy Announces Open Source Power Grid Projects for AI Modeling and Edge Applications, Plus Scope 3 Emissions Visibility

­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 the launch of three new open source projects to speed the energy transition, as well as the expansion of the existing LF Energy OpenEEMeter project into a broader suite to model energy usage based on meter data. In addition, new partnerships have been announced with the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the non-profit Open Energy Transition.

New Hosted Projects for Power Grid Edge Applications, Grid AI Modeling, and Scope 3 Emissions Visibility

The LF Energy Technical Advisory Council (TAC) has accepted three new projects into LF Energy. Hosted projects benefit from a neutral home that encourages greater collaboration, contribution, and innovation for the project, with lower R&D costs for stakeholders. Open governance means no one company or individual is in control of a project, enabling and protecting joint investment. Projects additionally benefit from LF Energy staff support for legal and trademark issues, technical infrastructure, events, marketing, governance, and more.

The latest projects to join LF Energy are:

• GEISA (Grid Edge Interoperability & Security Alliance) - GEISA creates a production-grade, secure technical foundation for a robust and open grid edge “app” ecosystem in constrained edge devices. GEISA specifies a uniform runtime environment for running applications, and creates a testing program to develop an industry-wide, consistent and interoperable approach to securely deploying grid edge applications, significantly reducing the audit burden on IT teams and accelerating the deployment of innovative solutions. The project was founded within LF Energy with support from Southern California Edison (SCE).
• GridFM - GridFM is an open source framework to enable the development of foundation models for power grids. Foundation models (FMs) are large artificial intelligence (AI) models pre-trained on massive data sets and adapted to a broad set of applications. FM technology can be applied for the electric power grid (GridFMs) have been conceptualized to be trained on grid data. GridFM was originated and contributed to LF Energy by Hydro-Quebec and IBM.
• SC Decarbonisation Hub - SC Decarbonisation Hub (SCDH) creates visibility, measurability, and to allow for conversations around scope 3 emissions data, which is central to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This visibility and measurability is then translated into decisions and actions that can deliver the change an organization is focused on. SCDH was originated by Shell before being contributed to LF Energy.

OpenEEMeter Ecosystem Expands to Become OpenDSM

OpenEEMeter has been an LF Energy project since it was contributed by Recurve in 2019. The project consists of an open source toolkit for implementing and developing standard methods for calculating normalized metered energy consumption (NMEC) and avoided energy use. The community that developed and maintains OpenEEMeter has expanded its scope, and now offers a larger suite of open source solutions in addition to OpenEEMeter. This suite has been branded LF Energy OpenDSM.

The OpenDSM suite of tools is used to ingest electric or gas data (AMI data) and model said usage in order to predict future usage given covariate information such as actual temperature. In practice this is used to measure energy savings of energy efficiency and demand response programs. This suite of tools is currently comprised of:

• EEweather pulls weather station data critical for building models.
• EEmeter creates long-term, building-level energy consumption models using billing, daily, or hourly resolution data.
  • EEmeter is often used to measure the load impact of energy efficiency, load shifting and other programs or factors that cause an ongoing change to energy consumption.
• DRmeter (Demand Response) creates short-term, building-level models with hourly resolution data.
  • DRmeter is commonly used to measure demand response programs
• GRIDmeter uses data from non-participating customers to remove model errors in energy efficiency and demand response measurements. Errors can be due to improperly applying a linear function to a non-linear response or complex and dynamic external factors such as natural disasters, economic shifts, and public health events that would otherwise skew results.

Open Energy Transition Joins LF Energy as an Associate Member

LF Energy welcomed Open Energy Transition as an Associate Member. Open Energy Transition is a non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the global energy transition towards 100% renewable energy. LF Energy members provide resources to support the foundation’s mission of building a unified approach to developing non-differentiating code that can enable utilities, grid operators, electric vehicle makers, sophisticated energy buyers and others to develop and implement technologies to transform the power sector. 

EVerest Joins IEA’s Task 53

Bidirectional EV charging, or Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G), plays an essential role in the decarbonization of the electricity sector. But there are still hurdles to overcome, e.g. lack of standardization and insufficient interoperability. To improve interoperability of bidirectional charging, the Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Technology Collaboration Programme (HEV TCP) by the International Energy Agency (IEA) launched Task 53. In line with this goal, the LF Energy EVerest Project has partnered with Task 53.

Both the EVerest project and Task 53 are working to remove hurdles and increase interoperability to encourage the expansion of EV charging: EVerest by implementing a universal open source charger firmware covering all relevant standards and their variations, and Task 53 by organizing cross-system interoperability testing. These approaches strongly complement each other, and further collaboration will provide tremendous interoperability benefits. 

TROLIE Publishes Version 1.0.0 Specification

LF Energy TROLIE is a community project developing an open source specification to address FERC Order 881, which requires North American transmission owners, operators, providers, and reliability coordinators to establish a means to exchange ratings information based on current and forecasted ambient conditions. The initiative was launched due to the absence of a dedicated standards body or vendor consortium actively working towards a technical specification for this critical exchange.

The TROLIE community recently announced that version 1.0.0 of the TROLIE specification has been published. At a high level, the specification facilitates the frequent exchange of power system ratings information, data needed to reliably operate the bulk power transmission while maximizing the utilization of existing transmission asset capacity. By creating a standard way for utilities to exchange this data, TROLIE promotes interoperability, supporting robust and reliable coordination between grid operators.

“This year, LF Energy has seen tremendous growth in support for open source software, hardware, and standards growing to drive the energy transition forward,” said LF Energy Executive Director Alex Thornton. “The benefits are clear; open source offers a pathway for digital grid modernization that is faster, less expensive, more secure, and more maintainable. The challenges presented by the energy transition and decarbonization goals are becoming even more pressing, and an open, innovative, collaborative approach is the best way forward to address them.”