The New Stack Podcast

How Can Open Source Help Fight Climate Change?

Episode Summary

DUBLIN — The mission of Linux Foundation Energy —  a collaborative, international effort by power companies to help move the world away from fossil fuels — has never seemed more urgent. In addition to the increased frequency and ferocity of extreme weather events like hurricanes and heat waves, the war between Russia and Ukraine has oil-dependent countries looking ahead to a winter of likely energy shortages. “I think we need to go faster,” said Benoît Jeanson, an enterprise architect at RTE, the French electricity transmission system operator.  He aded, “What we are doing with the Linux Foundation Energy is really something that will help for the future, and we need to go faster and faster. For this On the Road episode of The New Stack’s Makers podcast, recorded at Open Source Summit Europe here, we were joined by two guests who work in the power industry and whose organizations are part of LF Energy.

Episode Notes

DUBLIN — The mission of Linux Foundation Energy —  a collaborative, international effort by power companies to help move the world away from fossil fuels — has never seemed more urgent.

 

In addition to the increased frequency and ferocity of extreme weather events like hurricanes and heat waves, the war between Russia and Ukraine has oil-dependent countries looking ahead to a winter of likely energy shortages.

 

“I think we need to go faster,” said Benoît Jeanson, an enterprise architect at RTE, the French electricity transmission system operator.  He aded, “What we are doing with the Linux Foundation Energy is really something that will help for the future, and we need to go faster and faster.

 

For this On the Road episode of The New Stack’s Makers podcast, recorded at Open Source Summit Europe here, we were joined by two guests who work in the power industry and whose organizations are part of LF Energy.

 

In addition to Jeanson, this episode featured Jonas van den Bogaard, a solution architect and open source ambassador at Alliander, an energy network company that provides energy transport and distribution to a large part of the Netherlands. Van den Bogaard also serves on the technical advisory council of LF Energy.

 

Heather Joslyn, features editor of TNS, hosted this conversation.

18 Open Source Projects

LF Energy, started in 2018, now includes 59 member organizations, including cloud providers Google and Microsoft, enterprises like General Electric, and research institutions like Stanford University. It currently hosts 18 open source projects; the podcast guests encouraged listeners to check them out and contribute to them.

 

Among them: OpenSTEF, automated machine learning pipelines to deliver accurate forecasts of the load on the energy grid 48 hours ahead of time. “It gives us the opportunity to take action in time to prevent the maximum grid capacity [from being] reached,” said van den Bogaard.

 

“That’s going to prevent blackouts and that sort of thing. And also, another side: it makes us able to add renewable energies to the grid.”

 

Jeanson said that the open source projects aim to cover “every level of the stack. We also have tools that we want to develop at the substation level, in the field.” Among them: OperatorFabric, Written in Java and based on the Spring framework, OperatorFabric is a modular, extensible  platform for systems operators, including several features aimed at helping utility operators.

 

It helps operators coordinate the many tasks and alerts they need to keep track of by aggregate notifications from several applications into a single screen.

 

“Energy is of importance for everyone,” said van den Bogaard. “And especially moving to more cleaner and renewable energy is key for us all. We have great minds all around the world. And I really believe that we can achieve that. The best way to do that is to combine the efforts of all those great minds. Open source can be a great enabler of that.”

Cultural Education Needed

But persuading decision-makers in the power industry to participate in building the next generation of open source solutions can be a challenge, van den Bogaard acknowledged.

 

“You see, that the energy domain has been there for a long time, and has been quite stable, up to like 10 years ago.” he said. In such a tradition-bound culture, change is hard. In the cloud era, he added, a lot of organizations “need to digitalize and focus more on it and those capabilities are new. And also, open source, for in that matter is also a very new concept.”

 

One obstacle in the energy industry taking more advantage of open source tools, Jeanson noted, is security: “Some organizations still see open source to be a potential risk.” Getting them on board, he said, requires education and training.

 

He added, “vendors need to understand that open source is an opportunity that they should not be afraid of. That we want to do business with them based on open source. We just need to accelerate the momentum.

 

Check out the whole episode to learn more about LF Energy’s work.

Episode Transcription

Colleen Coll  0:08  

Welcome to this special edition of the new stack makers on the road. We're here at the Open Source summit in Dublin, Ireland. Discussions from the show floor with technologies, giving you their expertise and insights to help you with your everyday work.

 

Heather Joslyn  0:24  

Hi, and welcome to another on the road edition of the new stacks makers podcast. We're here at open source summit Europe, in downtown Dublin, Ireland. And we're here to talk about the topic that's on everybody's mind these days climate change, and specifically the role the open source community can play in driving the transition to renewable energy and decarbonisation efforts. And I'm here for our discussion today with two guests. First of all, we have been while Johnson. Benoit. Thank you. And can you tell us a little bit about what you do?

 

Benoît Jeanson  0:55  

So I'm working for our team. So our team needs that transmission system operator. So the grid for the power? And I'm not sure deck there, and I worked for the postal open source program office of RT

 

Heather Joslyn  1:07  

great. We're also here with Jonas Vandenberg guard, first of all, welcome. And can you tell us a little bit about what you do?

 

Jonas Van Den Bogaard  1:12  

Thank you for having us. I'm Jonas from Belgrade to Solution Architect at Alexander similar, Benoit. I'm also involved in the Eliane knows open source program office. Leander is the distribution system operator in the Netherlands. And we operate and manage energy networks.

 

Heather Joslyn  1:28  

Okay. And you're also involved with the Linux Foundation Energy, can you tell us a little bit about that?

 

Jonas Van Den Bogaard  1:33  

I share again, so Vielzahl yen arrived in LF energy as a strategic member. And we have been so since 2019. And the goal of energy is to bring parties and organization active in energy domain together. And really, the goal of advantages to be in an open source foundation focused on the power system sector, hosted within the Linux Foundation, and its mission is to really bring together investment, people and technology to transform the world's relationship to energy.

 

Heather Joslyn  2:07  

That's terrific. So can you tell us a little bit about how that initiative started? And what the organization saw as the opportunities there?

 

Jonas Van Den Bogaard  2:14  

I think, Benoit, the founding members of energy can bet probably answer this question best.

 

Benoît Jeanson  2:20  

So I'm the founding member. And RT RT is one of the founding members. And actually, I ended up joining very soon after. So it was in 2018, that we started this initiative, we understood that with the energy transition that we have, there are huge challenges regarding the code that we need to be developed for our industry. And we need to have reliable code, industrial grade code. And so we need to have something to accelerate the way that we elaborate the code. And we understood that open source could be a real opportunity for us to be around the table with all our partners, or their utilities are also vendors and building together the ecosystem of the future for the for this transition that is happening so fast.

 

Jonas Van Den Bogaard  3:10  

Yeah, that's also recently joined us aliannah, soon after, after our tea is to really focus on how and accelerate the move to more renewable energy and also create make that possible for new digital solutions and capabilities. An open source plays a really vital role in realizing these new digital capabilities, solutions. And energy really helps to bring people together with knowledge on how to do that, especially from the Linux Foundation side, but also brings together organizations and that can be vendors that can be university so they can be distribution system, transmission system operate together to realize DOS, common and shared solutions.

 

Heather Joslyn  3:53  

Are there any challenges in trying to get these specially the vendors, the stakeholders involved to collaborate on something like that people have been pretty happy to collaborate together.

 

Jonas Van Den Bogaard  4:03  

To be honest, it is a challenge, you see that the energy domain has been there for a long time, and has been quite stable up to like 10 years ago. So for a lot of organizations, both on the vendor side, but also on the utility side, the need to digitalize and focus more on it and those capabilities is new. And also open source in that matter is also a very new concept. So we see that is it's getting more and more awareness around open source and the possibilities are on that in the energy domain. But it's also still starting up so it's something we continue to have to explain it's great awareness around a bit. It's moving in the right direction.

 

Heather Joslyn  4:46  

I would say it's a little bit of education around the open source culture.

 

Jonas Van Den Bogaard  4:49  

I would definitely say so. So it's definitely something making otter utility aware of what open source can bring and how they work. One of the aspects which is really important in our domain is security. So So Mark eight is Asians still see open source to be potential risk. And I believe from an artistic perspective, but also from an open source perspective, that's good and open source can go hand in hand. Of course, you need to be aware of it and take derived measurements to also that requires education and training on how to do that, and how to take that in control.

 

Heather Joslyn  5:27  

What are some of the technologies involved in these solutions to move toward the transition in energy and decarbonisation,

 

Jonas Van Den Bogaard  5:34  

currently of NGOs, 18 projects, oh, and more in the pipeline, so we expected more in the future. And those projects are quite broad in scope. So we have projects that are focused on the application domain. One example is the OpenStack project. And that's also project we are working together on for Archie. And that's a project that is focused on creating forecasts for the load on the electricity grid for the next hours, two days, so well. So it really gives insight in what the load on the grid will be. And that's really important for companies like us, because having insight in what the load on the grid will be, we got an understanding of when the maximum capacity of the grid will be reached. And it also gives us an opportunity to take action in time to prevent a maximum grid capacity reached

 

Heather Joslyn  6:23  

and that can prevent blackouts and brownouts and that sort of thing.

 

Jonas Van Den Bogaard  6:26  

Yeah, that's gonna prevent blackouts, and that sort of things. And also notice it makes enable that we can add more renewable energies to the to the grid.

 

Benoît Jeanson  6:34  

So we actually are working at every level of the of the stack. So we have also tools that we want to develop at the substation level, you know, in the field. So and we're dealing with there, we have a project, for example, C Pass, which aims at doing virtualization, within the substation for the various function that we need to have at this level, we have also fledged power that enables to translate protocols from that legacy protocols and new protocols. So from that field to our data centers, we're also having cloud native solution for the operators, we have a project that we're working together on that is operator fabric, that is a tool for the for the operator in the control room, to have hyper vision and being have opportunities to ease and the coordination with the various actors and constraints and also dealing with the coming a eyes that will be developed for industry. So that's every layer, almost all of the technology that we can see here, are covering our needs.

 

Jonas Van Den Bogaard  7:37  

And to add to that, so advantages as a really broad spectrum. So from projects in the edge domain to an application domain, but domain, a thing that they all have in common is to really focus on the unique challenges we have in the energy domain. And it's really to bring out of energy is the common place to house those projects. And also create a network around those projects. We have organizations that are working on these projects, to collaborate with one another and exchange experiences and knowledge.

 

Heather Joslyn  8:08  

You mentioned some of the projects, is there a particular project that you would like to draw people's attention to maybe as potential maintainers, or, you know, contributors or, or that you think is just doing something that's really going to change, change things in a big way.

 

Jonas Van Den Bogaard  8:21  

I think we have 18 amazing projects in energy. And I would really invite everyone to have a look at those projects to see which projects could help you if you are challenged in your organization or in that in the domain you are. And because they are really broad projects. And for some projects can be interesting for utilities orders can be more interesting for for market parties or for vendors. Of course, if you also project I was heavily involved in this open stuff I just mentioned it so if you are working on AI and are interested in in that domain, and you won't want to help the world to move to more clean energy, we definitely looking for new contributors and organization to help us bring that project further and see how we can make even better forecast on electricity load on the grid and incorporate external factors like wind energy, solar energy, and what a data etc.

 

Heather Joslyn  9:15  

are there. Particular big challenges that you see are big problems that you would like to see someone tackle in this space that they have not yet

 

Jonas Van Den Bogaard  9:24  

or I want one thing I hope Elif energy can help an open source in particular is that you see that the wheel is reinvented many times. And I hope by being here today and focusing on the shores that we can but know the powers and investments to not reinvent the wheel again, but put together the effort and see if we can, by collaborating create more innovation together than we each can by ourselves.

 

Benoît Jeanson  9:54  

I think that we need to move faster. And what we see that it's happening the climate change is happening. So and in Europe, we have a problem with the energies and thanks to the war. And so we have to tackle this all these challenges. That's one. And what we are doing with the Linux Foundation is energy is really something that will help for the future. And we need to go faster and faster, we don't need, we need also to offer opportunity for business for vendors and so on. And vendors need to understand that blunt force is an opportunity that's that they should not be afraid of that we want to do business with them based on open source, we just need to accelerate the momentum. So please join. And please work with us. We're in the same on the same earth. That's very

 

Heather Joslyn  10:41  

true. Like we've only got one Earth. So how can folks get involved? They go to websites? Do they do they? What would you advise they do to get

 

Jonas Van Den Bogaard  10:49  

involved, we have an energy website, so you can visit us on lf energy.org. Okay, so please invite everyone to have a look at our website, you can find more information about all our 80 projects we have at LF energy. Also you can find information on how to get in contact of these individual projects. Also, as far as we have a general mailing list of energy to be subscribed to the mailing list. If you want to stay up to date with recent developments in the LF energy community. We also are active on social media. You can find us on LinkedIn for example, if you want to stay up to date via via LinkedIn, for example.

 

Heather Joslyn  11:25  

Okay, any final thoughts? Any final words on LF energy and that the work it's doing?

 

Jonas Van Den Bogaard  11:30  

I just would highlight Benoit already mentioned this. I think energy is of importance for everyone. And especially moving to more cleaner and renewable energy is key for us all. And I think we have great minds all around the world. And I really believe that we can achieve that. And I think the best way to do that is to combine the efforts of all those great minds. And I think l of energy and open source can be a great enabler of that I

 

Heather Joslyn  11:57  

fully agree with Jonas. And to go faster than we are now, obviously. Well, thank you very much. Gentlemen, thank you very much, Jonas bendable guard and Ben wall Johnson. Thank you very much for joining us. And thank you for joining us for another episode of the new stack makers, and we'll see you soon.

 

Alex Williams  12:19  

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Transcribed by https://otter.ai