Sep 05, 2024

Linux Foundation Energy Restructures Project Ecosystem, While Welcoming New Members From the Technology and Electrical Utility Communities

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 formation of a half-dozen Special Interest Groups (SIGs) to enable better collaboration and accelerate the development of open source tools and standards for the energy transition. The foundation has also completed security audits of the OperatorFabric and SEAPATH projects, elected new governing board members, and added four new members to its roster, including its first North American electrical utility member. These announcements come at the start of the sold out LF Energy Summit, taking place 5-6 September in Brussels.

Evolution of Technical Project Ecosystem with Establishment of Special Interest Groups

The LF Energy Technical Advisory Council (TAC) has evolved the way projects are categorized into a series of Special Interest Groups (SIGs). These SIGs are designed to bring projects together that operate in similar parts of the energy tech stack to enable best practices sharing, address challenges and trends, and collaborate on interoperability between one another. The SIGs are led by the lead maintainers of each project under the respective SIG, but are open to any interested parties for participation. The newly established SIGs, and LF Energy-hosted projects falling under them, are:

  • LF Energy AI: The LF Energy AI SIG was 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.
  • Data Standards and Tooling: The Data Standards and Tooling SIG brings together project communities that focus on gathering, analyzing, and using data to benefit digitalization of energy systems. Current projects include:
  • Digital Substations: This SIG seeks to optimize digital substations through open source technology and provides a collaboration platform for projects working on digital substations. Current projects include:
  • EV Charging: As electric vehicle adoption accelerates, it is essential to have in place a robust, reliable, interoperable network of EV charging stations. This SIG seeks to develop the technology necessary to ensure these chargers have the highest uptime possible, and that they work with every EV regardless of make, model, payment method, and cloud connection. It additionally seeks to prevent the problem of stranded assets in the case of chargers running proprietary software that become bricked when the company that developed the software goes out of business or decides to no longer maintain it. Current projects include:
  • Grid Operations: The energy transition is changing the way electrical utilities operate. The Grid Operations SIG seeks to automate grid operations to the extent possible, to ensure optimal utilization of existing infrastructure, and provide grid operators with maximum control and insight. This includes everywhere from the control center to the edge of the grid. Current projects include:
  • Grid Simulation and Modeling: As electrical utilities move away from the traditional top-down approach to power generation, transmission, and distribution due to the growth in distributed energy resources (DERs) like solar and wind, it has become more difficult to predict grid behavior. The Grid Simulation and Modeling SIG works to ensure that utilities can accurately simulate and predict conditions and efficiently ensure uptime, while minimizing waste. Current projects include:

Security Audits of LF Energy OperatorFabric and SEAPATH

Quarkslab was engaged to carry out a holistic security audit of LF Energy’s OperatorFabric project, a modular, extensible, industrial-strength platform for use in electricity, water, and other utility operations. The audit, which was also facilitated by the Open Source Technology Improvement Fund (OSTIF), was carried out between April and May, 2024, with a goal of identifying vulnerabilities within the scope using dynamic and static analysis, assessing and reducing risk level, and providing expert advice on OperatorFabric’s level of security, as well as possible improvements. 

The audit found one critical security vulnerability in OperatorFabric, which could only be exploited by someone with privileged system access and has already been remedied by the project maintainers. The auditors did highlight that generally security is considered seriously by the OperatorFabric community, with the code being high quality and organized, with measures already in place to spot potential vulnerabilities. More details can be found in LF Energy’s blog post about this audit.

Additionally, Ada Logics was engaged to carry out a holistic security audit of LF Energy’s SEAPATH project, which offers a reference design and industrial-grade open source real-time platform that can run virtualized automation and protection applications, primarily for power substations. The audit, also facilitated by OSTIF, was carried out between April and June 2024, and was intended to evaluate the project’s security posture and identify potential vulnerabilities. 

This process found that the SEAPATH community has prioritized security highly, and invested in security hardening and implementation of best practices. It also identified several areas for improvement. Most of the identified vulnerabilities have already been addressed following the audit’s completion. To address the remaining issues, fuzz testing is being implemented for several third-party dependencies that are considered memory-unsafe, and updates to documentation and organizational structure are being made. More details can be found in LF Energy’s blog post about this audit.

Both of these audits are part of LF Energy’s commitment to creating open source solutions for energy systems that are kept secure to ensure reliability of these systems.

New Representatives Join LF Energy Governing Board

As a neutral, non-profit organization, LF Energy operates under the auspices of a governing board. Strategic Members of LF Energy receive an automatic seat on the board, and General Members each receive a vote to elect representatives to the board. The newly elected General Member representatives for 2024-2025 are Dr. Marco Möller, CEO and Co-Founder of Pionix, and Christophe Villemer, Executive Vice President of Savoir-faire Linux. Both Marco and Christophe have been heavily involved in the LF Energy community already, particularly with the EVerest and SEAPATH projects respectively. 

The prior General Member representatives to the board, Dr. Marissa Hummon of Utilidata and Dr. McGee Young of WattCarbon, elected not to run for reelection. LF Energy thanks Marissa and McGee for their service, and looks forward to their continued involvement in the community.

“Software-Defined Vertical Industries: Transformation Through Open Source”

The Linux Foundation recently released a new report, “Software-Defined Vertical Industries: Transformation Through Open Source”. Sponsored by LF Energy, the report analyzes how vertical industries have become increasingly software-defined thanks to open source technologies. The report serves as a guide for how industries that are still in the early stages of digital transformation can accelerate their progress and increase innovation by adopting and contributing to open source. The report is available to download at no cost.

“Open Source and Energy Interoperability: Opportunities for Energy Stakeholders in Canada”

Linux Foundation Research was awarded a grant in 2023 by Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) to analyze the current state of open source adoption in the Canadian energy sector, in addition to challenges and opportunities that open source can address. The result is a detailed report, “Open Source and Energy Interoperability: Opportunities for Energy Stakeholders in Canada,” which examines how digitalization in the energy sector leverages digital technologies to improve the efficiency, reliability, and sustainability of energy systems. 

The qualitative report features input from more than a dozen various stakeholders and experts from electrical utilities, research universities, commercial vendors, and non-profit organizations. It outlines opportunities, case studies of successful deployments, barriers to adoption, and recommendations for accelerating digital transformation through open source. Although focused on Canada, the findings are widely applicable to other geographies facing similar challenges. The final report is available to download publicly for free.

LF Energy Adds Four New Members, Including First North American Utility

LF Energy welcomed three new General Members and two new Associate Members in recent months. LF Energy members provide funding and 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.

At the General Member level, Hydro-Québec joined LF Energy, as the foundation’s first North American electrical utility member. Welotec, a long established industrial technology company, and Artelys, which specializes in optimization, modeling and data science, also joined as General Members. 

At the Associate Member level, Eindhoven University of Technology, a leading research university in the Netherlands that already contributes to multiple LF Energy projects such as Power Grid Model, also joined.

“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.”

LF Energy Resources

LF Energy | https://www.lfenergy.org