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A New Era for Grid Connectivity: Announcing the CDS Registration Specifications

By | July 30, 2026

A New Era for Grid Connectivity: Announcing the CDS Registration Specifications

By Daniel Roesler, CDS Registration Working Group (WG1) Maintainer

After years of collaborative development, I’m thrilled to announce the first published drafts of the LF Energy Connected Data Specifications (CDS) Registration protocols. These foundational specifications mark a critical step forward for how the energy industry establishes secure, scalable, and automated connections between central grid entities and the external ecosystem.

Today, we’re releasing two draft specifications developed by the CDS Registration Working Group (WG1):

  • CDS-WG1-01 (Server Metadata) – Standardizes how utilities and other central entities publish structured, machine-readable information about their digital capabilities and service territories.
  • CDS-WG1-02 (Client Registration) – Standardizes how central entities automate the onboarding, credential management, secure messaging, and configuration of external vendors, customers, and AI/ML agents.

Read the specifications here: https://cds-registration.lfenergy.org/ 

The Data Bottleneck Holding the Grid Back

The energy sector is undergoing a once-in-a-generation transformation. AI datacenters are overwhelming grid capacity, virtual power plants (VPPs) are becoming essential grid assets, and distributed energy resources (DERs) and EVs are reshaping load profiles. To navigate this new reality, utilities, ISOs, TSOs, and other central grid entities must integrate with millions of external partners, technology providers, and enterprise customers.

However, every time a new vendor, customer, or technology provider tries to connect to a utility, they hit the same bottleneck: manual, ad-hoc onboarding.

Back-and-forth emails, unstructured SFTP setups, haphazardly shared credentials, ad-hoc data formats, and proprietary dashboards aren’t just slow and have questionable security, they’re a hard cap on scalability. I’ve personally seen projects stall for months just because no one can figure out how to get the data safely from A to B. This fragmented, manual approach cannot support the volume, velocity, or security requirements of a modern, data-driven grid.

Why the CDS Matters

The CDS Registration specs solve this foundational problem by providing an open, freely available, secure framework for grid connectivity. Built on proven standards like OAuth and TLS, these CDS protocols replace manual workflows with automated, auditable, and scalable processes.

  • CDS-WG1-01 (“Server Metadata”) – This specification gives utilities and other central entities a structured way to publish metadata and what digital capabilities they offer.
  • CDS-WG1-02 (“Client Registration”) – This specification gives utilities a complete lifecycle for secure connectivity.

Here are some of the features in these specifications:

  • Automated discovery of utilities and central entities that provide digital connectivity
  • Differentiation of connectivity across geographic or logical service territories
  • Automated onboarding with structured, API-driven registration flows.
  • Secure credential rotation (API keys, TLS certs, tokens) without human intervention
  • Standardized messaging to replace insecure email chains and out-of-band notifications
  • Grant and configuration management for dynamic scope changes and access controls
  • Secure file exchange for certificates, contracts, and onboarding documents

AI-ready by design

By providing well-structured, consistently formatted data and automated credential flows, they enable AI/ML systems to securely discover, authenticate, and integrate with grid infrastructure at scale, without overwhelming utility and central entity internal resources.

Additionally, the CDS framework provides utilities and central entities with fine-tuned access controls for each connection, so can appropriately provision access to only the data or capabilities that’s approved, and nothing more.

Open, Royalty-Free, and Industry-Driven

The CDS project is hosted under LF Energy and governed by the Linux Foundation Energy Standards and Specifications (LFESS) joint development model. This means the specifications are open, freely available, and royalty-free to implement. It also means the development process is transparent, consensus-driven, and vendor-neutral. Anyone can read, test, and provide comments. Any vendor can implement the CDS framework royalty-free and unencumbered by patents.

We’re publishing these drafts to invite industry feedback, technical validation, and early pilot partnerships. Whether you’re a utility, AI developer, VPP operator, energy tech vendor, or government agency, your input will shape how these protocols evolve.

Here’s how you can get involved:

We’re also actively seeking pilot partners for technical proofs of concept, field trials, and scaled deployments. If you want to put CDS to work in your environment, please reach out!

Finally, I want to thank every contributor, reviewer, and partner who helped turn years of industry pain points into concrete, open standards.

FAQ

  • How do I contribute to the CDS Registration specifications? Join the mailing list at lists.lfenergy.org/g/cds-registration-wg, review the drafts, and submit feedback through the GitHub repo at github.com/lfe-cds/CDS-Registration. 
  • Where is the public roadmap for CDS Registration? Progress is tracked through the CDS Registration Working Group (WG1), with meetings open to the public via the mailing list calendar.
  • Who maintains CDS Registration? The specifications are maintained under the CDS Registration Working Group (WG1), hosted at LF Energy.
  • What does the release cadence look like? CDS-WG1-01 and CDS-WG1-02 are currently published as draft specifications, open for industry feedback and pilot partnerships ahead of further revisions.
  • How can my organization get involved in a pilot? Reach out directly as we are actively seeking pilot partners for proofs of concept, field trials, and scaled deployments.

About CDS Registration

CDS Registration is a pair of open specifications hosted at LF Energy defining the connectivity layer between utilities and third-party companies: CDS-WG1-01 (Server Metadata) standardizes how utilities publish their API capabilities via a well-known endpoint, and CDS-WG1-02 (Client Registration) standardizes how third parties register, authenticate, and manage secure connections via OAuth 2.0. Maintained by DRX Gateway with Flexidao. CDS Customer Data builds on CDS Registration as its connectivity foundation.

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