The smart grid future can only be open source says energy firm Alliander

As more renewable energy sources come online grids and market mechansims are changing and controlling them must be a collaborative effort, says director of systems operations Arjan Stam

There are many reasons why organisations choose open-source software. Some do so for the price advantage, others for the functionality. However, there are some for whom there's simply no choice.

Take Alliander, the Dutch energy supplier. Alliander is a distribution systems operator (DSO), meaning it's responsible for the overhead and underground cables connecting homes and businesses. In total it manages 90,000 km of cabling, plus all the substations and other equipment required for the grid to function properly.

In the past the operational picture was straightforward: electricity from power stations would be transmitted over high-voltage lines controlled by Transmission System Operators (TSOs). The DSOs would then transform the power to lower voltages and distribute it to end-users through the local distribution networks.

Indeed, this is still how it works, but as fossil fuel generation gives way to renewables to meet decarbonisation requirements in the fight against climate change, the two roles have started to overlap. Now DSOs are also responsible for input to the grid in the shape of wind farms and domestic solar. This presents a significant engineering challenge because what used to be predictable and steady is now much more variable and intermittent and yet the physical infrastructure is slow to change.

Winds of change

The variability of supply, together with the need for flexibility to accommodate more small sources as they come online has meant that DSOs have had to become much more hands-on in the management of their grids, explained Arjan Stam, director of systems operations at Alliander. TSOs have always been connected to energy markets but now DSOs are also having to adopt pricing mechanisms to manage supply and demand from the small generators and households in their area. There are also companies that are paid to balance the grid, by injecting power or drawing it off into battery storage.

We're always looking at what's happening next, Arjan Stam, Alliander

In IT terms, this all amounts to an enormous digital transformation. For example, there are 47,000 substations under Alliander's remit which will need to be digitised. There are smart meters to be managed and voltages to be optimised dynamically across the grid so that no energy supplier, large or small, gets booted off should thresholds be exceeded in their stretch of cable. Instead of being dumb voltage-droppers, transformers must be made smart, capable of taking occasional overloading without overheating. DSOs like Alliander have had to learn to predict fluctuating energy demands and also to accommodate new technologies as they come online. And since their customers are the small and mid-sized energy generators, they also need to provide a window into the grid's operations so the suppliers can monitor outputs and earnings.

"We need to take measures so that everybody has equal access to the energy system to deliver energy," said Stam. "We're always looking at what's happening next, starting initiatives in order to understand our environment and what's happening."

A joined-up approach requires collaboration

In 2012, foreseeing the large number of sensors and devices that would be required to monitor the nascent smart grid and operational the challenges this would bring, engineers from Alliander started developing the Open Smart Grid Platform (OSGP), an industrial IoT platform designed to enable grid operators to collect the data needed to control and manage smart devices on the grid. This could only be created using the open-source method, said Stam.

"We needed advanced control software, and that's very expensive," he explained. "These types of systems, which are not available in the marketplace, are complex. And they need to be applied at a large scale like with the 47,000 secondary substations."

The skills required are only really to be found within the energy distribution sector and are thus both scarce and costly, he went on. As a highly regulated industry, numerous standards and protocols must be adhered to and therefore a good understanding of the sector is crucial.

"So that's why we need to collaborate, we're trying to find similarly minded DSOs and TSOs with the same outlook in order to be able to develop this with a common understanding."

In October, the project joined LF Energy, the Linux Foundation's initiative to support the energy sector's transition to renewables, and in February the platform was contributed to the foundation. However, to better position the platform in the wider marketplace a rebranding was required because of a naming clash. OSGP is now called Grid eXchange Fabric (GXF), although for now, the two names exist side by side. LF Energy will assist with pushing through the rebranding process, said Stam.

With the LF Energy's help, GXF will be able to fish deeper into a small pool of qualified developers, Stam hopes.

"We're looking on a larger scale in order to get access to the very small number of people that are able to make products in this space."

We're really building a protocol-agnostic layer for the developer

GFX is already being used to control around 300,000 streetlights in the Netherlands and is now being connected to more assets so they can be monitored. The aim is to make it applicable to any energy grid across the globe, Stam said, by making the platform extensible and expanding the number of protocols it supports. While it currently mostly installed on-premises, moves are afoot to "Dockerise" GFX so it can be deployed on Kubernetes or more generally in the cloud.

"We're really building a protocol-agnostic layer for the developer," said Stam. "The developer just wants access to the data then they can build out whatever connectors they want. They don't want to have to worry about all the backend stuff".

Commenting on the need for a joined-up approach to energy grids LF Energy executive director Shuli Goodman said: "We have the tools necessary to make our power grid more efficient and better for our environment, but we're running into a system integration problem at a global scale. Grid operators need a way to cut through the noise of different data access protocols to pull insights from smart devices directly. With the addition of GXF, the Grid eXchange Fabric, we will leverage the shared expertise of our community to tackle this problem head on."