LF Energy launched a project to create an open source tool for managing energy demand across the electrical grid.

The project is called OpenLEADR, and it is a common implementation of the Open Automated Demand Response (OpenADR), which is an open standard for exchanging demand response information among global utilities, aggregators and energy managers, and control systems to better manage the supply and demand of energy. 

Utilities across the globe support their own version of OpenADR, and many of them cooperated on the OpenADR standard specification, said Shuli Goodman, executive director of LF Energy. “All of them have gone off and implemented their own versions of it,” and it’s creating a considerable amount of technical debt, she explained.

“What we want to do is begin to organize, coordinate, and direct people to working off of one common implementation that can be collectively supported, so that it can get better and better and better and faster and faster and faster,” Goodman said. A common implementation of OpenADR will allow organizations to focus on the more complex aspects of flexibility and demand response, she added.

This is the latest project to come from LF Energy, a vendor-neutral initiative that operates as an arm of The Linux Foundation (LF) to establish open source, interoperable frameworks for accelerating the energy, electricity, and electric mobility sectors' worldwide decarbonization goals.

“Open source is the fastest way to iterate and to change, and we need speed right now,” said Goodman. “That's the reason why LF Energy exists – to accelerate innovation.”

We are at a turning point in history, both in our consumption and production of energy. In the energy world, the relationship between the vendors, suppliers, OEMs, utilities, regulators, and stakeholders is a log jam, Goodman said.

“With a log jam, you cannot delicately pick at it,” she added. “The way that you move a log jam is with dynamite. Not only are we not moving anywhere near quickly enough, any ambitions we may have towards electric mobility, demand response, electrification, decarbonization of the grid, all of those things require a kind of agility and an ability to move at the speed of technology.” 

And for the most part, utilities are laggards, she said.

No matter how much utilities want to transition to renewable energy and “go green,” the current power grid and control systems that were built decades ago simply can’t handle the torrent of edge data headed their way. “The truth is that utilities do not yet have the infrastructure to manage the data that would enable price based grid coordination,” Goodman said.

This influx of data, paired with the variability of renewable energy, Goodman explained, requires that electricity and energy no longer reside under centralized control, but instead rely on interconnected devices to actively participate in electricity systems.

Expanding the grid into a distributed model for energy production and distribution will require a complete paradigm shift to enable the electrification of everything to scale.

And that begins with abandoning one of the governing principles of how the centralized grid manages supply and demand —  inertia — which Goodman said “is deeply embedded in the organizational structure of utilities.”

In the traditional power system, inertia is a form of energy storage created by turbines that are fed by fossil fuel power plants pressurizing coal, natural gas, and water. Spinning turbines connect to generators creating the power that is pumped onto the grid. In this sense, think of inertia as a steam train: once it gets moving, it will continue on in the same direction without much input. Turbines are no different — a spinning turbine is hard to stop because it has high inertia — and can resist disruptions in the grid caused by changes in demand, making it a relatively consistent power generator. 

But a grid of variable energy calls for low inertia, Goodman said. “We have to be able to do that using data to kind of network electrons,” she added. “Electrons need a physical conduit ... and what we can do is network the metadata about electrons. So, we are, in a sense, creating the internet of energy.”