Linux Foundation's LF Energy this week announced its new project, Grid eXchange Fabric (GXF), a scalable and technology-agnostic industrial IoT platform that allows grid operators to securely collect data and monitor, control and manage smart devices on the grid.
Formerly known as Open Smart Grid Platform (OSGP), GXF was created by leading Dutch distribution system operator Alliander and is the first project contributed by the company to the open-source community since joining LF Energy last October as a Premier Member.
In recent years, grid operators have added operational hardware to the power grid that gathers data through IoT sensors to garner better insight into infrastructure performance. Coupled with utility operational changes are the millions of distributed energy devices coming onto the grid, each of which requires vastly different tools and processes to ensure interoperability. The purpose of GXF is to decrease the overall complexity and associated maintenance costs of accessing these devices by creating a single generic method of abstracting data access.
To fully realize the energy transition, GXF enables energy network operators to create advanced business applications across multiple use cases. For instance, Alliander is already using GXF to manage public street lights in the Netherlands. Other grid operators have applied GXF as the head-end system, which allows for maximum data flexibility between smart meters and network operators, while some have used GXF to manage microgrids.
Dr. Shuli Goodman, Executive Director, LF Energy
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.