FlexMeasures

This video was originally posted at https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-6109-overcoming-the-chicken-and-egg-problem-from-the-battlelines-of-the-s2-energy-flexibility-protocol-adoption/ and is provided by FOSDEM under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Belgium Licence. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/be/deed.en

Abstract:
Open communication protocols and open source software go hand in hand and fuel each other. But there is a potential chicken-and-egg problem: Should the OEMs support it first, or are they waiting for widespread support of the protocol in EMS implementations (who are hesitant if the OEMs don't support it)?

The only forward is to start showing real solutions and implementations with front-runners from both sides. Then, these smaller showcases can become an avalanche and lift the sector up in an open way. Both steps are difficult and need partnerships.

Energy flexibility optimization behind the meter is already deployed in practice. However, networking protocols and definitions of flexibility are used which are not standardized and not openly available. This makes building new solutions with new flexible energy assets (like EVs, batteries, heat pumps and also solar inverters) a chore and drives up costs. Each new energy asset (or new brand) has to be integrated with their specific protocols and patterns. New protocols attempt to standardize these concepts, such as the S2 protocol. It targets an international audience for both existing and new/future energy assets. See https://s2standard.org/

S2 is approved as European standard, but the next batteline is to showcase that implementations can work and that both sides, OEMs and EMS, are willing to get to work. Open source implementations will provide building blocks and serve as reference.

This presentation will show the efforts and experiences of two different consortia, from different implementation projects, with adopting the protocol and creating tools to spur adoption by other innovators and OEMs. Of course, we will also briefly outline the protocol itself, and address differences and shared features in other existing protocols in this space, like EEBus and OpenADR.

We hope this talk can spur more interest and collaboration in this space and towards a lift for open efforts in the industry.

Join our presentation if you want to learn more about protocol standardization efforts within the energy transition and S2 specifically!

Speakers:
Nicolas Höning, Seita Energy Flexibility

The first LF Energy FlexMeasures developer training teaches software practitioners at energy startups and other innovative service companies interested in using FlexMeasures crucial lessons and tricks.

It is primarily meant for developers who have read the documentation and already taken their first steps with FlexMeasures. Newcomers are also welcome to listen in if they want a deep dive into the technology.

The session starts with a short demo of the tool for everyone not yet familiar with the FlexMeasures platform.

The bulk of the session consists of an open Q&A with developers who have started their FlexMeasures journey. Felix discusses modeling goals and various strategies to get the most out of FlexMeasures.

There is additionally a "show and tell" of coding approaches, with Felix commenting on best practices and further opportunities for utilizing the platform.

Learn more about FlexMeasures at https://lfenergy.org/projects/flexmeasures/.

Knowledge Transfer Between Past to Current Projects - from Interflex to FlexMeasures - Nicolas Höning, Seita Energy Flexibility

Often, innovation from projects dies when the project ends. Knowledge transfer between past projects to current living projects and libraries (e.g. by code donation) is an important activity. Next to parties coming together per project, this is where huge potentials of the often-cited win-win effects of open source and innovation lie hidden. We will present the ongoing activity of donating the ReFlex algorithms developed by TNO in the Interflex H2020 project (http://reflexenergy.nl/) to the LF Energy project FlexMeasures (https://flexmeasures.io). FlexMeasures provides a software architecture to model different behind-the-meter energy flexibility setups, and also includes algorithms for storage scheduling. Other schedules can be added by design. The ReFlex algorithms have been designed for aggregation scenarios where computation speed is crucial, and also use the new S2 standard for flexibility. TNO and Seita are working together to extend FlexMeasures range of schedulers with ReFlex algorithms. We will lay out the potential gains, the new architecture, but also the problems we have to overcome, e.g. to align architectures, and align incentives for maintenance.

This video was originally posted to https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/event/fosdem-2024-2509-using-flexmeasures-to-build-a-climate-tech-startup-in-15-minutes/. Thank you to FOSDEM for sharing under CC-BY-2.0-BE-DEED (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/be/deed.en).

FlexMeasures is the intelligent & developer-friendly EMS to support real-time energy flexibility apps, rapidly and scalable.

In this talk, presented by Nicolas Höning of Seita, we want to focus on the "developer-friendly" part, and demonstrate the steps it takes to turn FlexMeasures into a smart backend, for instance to power the intelligent scheduling in your new climate tech startup! (you can also tinker with this at home, of course)

In this highly relevant example, we assume you control the heating for your customers' buildings. There is a heat pump and solar panels. You promise your customers to heat their home with their own solar power if possible. You even promise to use the cheapest grid power when the sun isn't shining. Green building, low energy bill!

Our tutorial will turn this promise into reality ― in any case, the data-driven optimal computations you'd need (measuring and on/off control of hardware not included).

FlexMeasures is a Flask web server, so this tutorial will use Python. We will use the FlexMeasures API, but also its CLI and the Python client ― the possibilities are rich. We also show how to add custom logic in a FlexMeasures plugin.

In short, we will:
-create a new customer account with the relevant asset models for this use case (via a new API endpoint, e.g. called from your CRM)
-feed local measurements (e.g. solar, temperature) regularly into your FlexMeasures server, using the FlexMeasures Python client
-get the latest price and weather forecast data from third-party-APIs (regularly via cron jobs), using existing FlexMeasures plugins
-create forecasts for solar data and prices (regularly via cron jobs)
-call the FlexMeasures scheduler to compute when to draw green & cheap electricity for heating (via the FlexMeasures API) which you can out to use in the building
-define a cost reporter and let it run (regularly via cron jobs)
-configure a FlexMeasures dashboard to show the relevant data in one place

Learn more about the LF Energy FlexMeasures Project at https://lfenergy.org/projects/flexmeasures/.