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An open, ontology-driven interoperability framework enabling secure, semantic-centric data exchange across the energy ecosystem and beyond.

About SEF

Reaching global energy sustainability goals requires seamless, secure, and flexible data exchange. Today, that interoperability is hindered by closed platforms, incompatible protocols, and vendor lock-in. The LF Energy Semantic Energy Framework (SEF) addresses these challenges by providing a distributed, open-source, multi-domain interoperability framework designed to enable semantic data representation, discovery, and reasoning across diverse systems.

LFE-SEF builds on the Semantic Interoperability Framework (SIF) developed under the EU Horizon 2020 InterConnect Project (2019–2024), which brought together 50 partners to demonstrate semantic interoperability across smart home, smart building, grid, and IoT domains. The InterConnect SIF delivered the foundational tools, methods, and specifications needed to interconnect semantically enabled services into interoperable ecosystems—capabilities that now serve as the basis for LFE-SEF.

The framework allows stakeholders to securely exchange heterogeneous data without requiring a centralized platform or disruption to existing systems. Through service adapters, semantic brokerage, reasoning capabilities, and a configurable service catalog, LFE-SEF enables trusted cross-domain information exchange. While rooted in the energy sector, its ontology-agnostic, domain-neutral design supports adoption in adjacent industries such as healthcare, agriculture, and other data-intensive domains.

Key Features

Interoperability Without a Central Platform

Interoperability originates at the stakeholder level, supported by service adapters that respect existing interfaces and workflows.

Ontology-Agnostic Architecture

While SAREF and its extensions serve as the default ontology, the framework supports any ontology expressed in RDF/OWL.

Security and Privacy by Design

All communication interfaces are secured, with integrators able to enforce their own best practices and control knowledge flows.

Flexible Deployment

Components can run across devices, edge nodes, enterprise systems, and cloud environments.

Federated Knowledge Spaces

Distributed reasoning enables semantically interoperable ecosystems that support complex queries and form the foundation for inter-domain data spaces.

Core Components

Semantic Interoperability Layer (Knowledge Engine)

Provides semantic translation and discovery capabilities using ontology-driven knowledge models. Supports any ontology expressed in RDF/OWL.

Service Store

A web-based catalog of interoperable services that enables stakeholders to register, discover, and validate services. It functions as the identity provider of the ecosystem and offers a Knowledge Explorer to visualize semantic relationships. Integrators may deploy their own instance as needed.

Service Adapters

The combination of Service Specific Adapters (SSA) and the Generic Adapter (GA) creates a unified gateway between legacy interfaces and the LFE-SEF framework, ensuring secure, trusted communication and consistent semantic mapping.

Project Roadmap

Contributing Organizations

SEF Videos

Sponsored Session: Collaborative Analytics and Semantic Interoperability for the Energy Sector - José Ricardo Andrade & Fábio Coelho, INESC TEC Predico: Collaborative analytics meet energy forecasting - José Ricardo Andrade Predico is an open-source, collaborative forecasting platform developed by INESC TEC. It enables organizations with shared interests to efficiently procure forecasts and sell forecasts or measurement data through market-based mechanisms. By combining collaborative forecasting with incentive-driven approaches, Predico reduces overhead, improves accuracy, and aligns the objectives of all participants. A recent proof-of-concept with the Elia Group demonstrated the platform’s capabilities in a real-world context. In this session, we will present an overview of the platform and share key insights from the results achieved so far. Semantic interoperability framework for smart homes and grids - Fábio Coelho This session introduces this framework, which was designed and developed in scope of a large H2020 project to deliver data and service interoperability. This framework is geared to discover and promote semantic data exchange among services, providing semantic interoperability. The session covers the design, architecture of core components and provides a wide overview of services and the EU-wide demonstrations that allowed to validate the developments. 39:44

Sponsored Session: Collaborative Analytics and Semantic Interoperability for the Energy Sector - José Ricardo Andrade & Fábio Coelho, INESC TEC

Predico: Collaborative analytics meet energy forecasting - José Ricardo Andrade
Predico is an open-source, collaborative forecasting platform developed by INESC TEC. It enables organizations with shared interests to efficiently procure forecasts and sell forecasts or measurement data through market-based mechanisms. By combining collaborative forecasting with incentive-driven approaches, Predico reduces overhead, improves accuracy, and aligns the objectives of all participants. A recent proof-of-concept with the Elia Group demonstrated the platform’s capabilities in a real-world context. In this session, we will present an overview of the platform and share key insights from the results achieved so far.

Semantic interoperability framework for smart homes and grids - Fábio Coelho
This session introduces this framework, which was designed and developed in scope of a large H2020 project to deliver data and service interoperability. This framework is geared to discover and promote semantic data exchange among services, providing semantic interoperability. The session covers the design, architecture of core components and provides a wide overview of services and the EU-wide demonstrations that allowed to validate the developments.

YouTube Video UExLeUZmMUo5WGtwdlptOGYtRHRKNVlVZjNmWnlOVDZCaC41NkI0NEY2RDEwNTU3Q0M2

Sponsored Session: Collaborative Analytics and Semantic Inter... José Ricardo Andrade & Fábio Coelho

September 22, 2025 2:40 pm

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