Historically, we would solve problems by building infrastructure to handle the worst-case scenario. This has proven to be too slow and too expensive; we can’t build our way out of this problem. Instead, as former FERC Chairman Glick stated, “we need to squeeze everything out of our existing grid.” To do so, we need to rapidly adopt data-driven, digital optimization of our physical assets, building only what we need.

Open source is a way of collaborating on digital research and development, and it is the de facto building block of modern technology. These open building blocks solve the most common challenges, are assembled together much like Legos, then customized as needed for a specific problem. Every single website, including this one, is using open source software under the hood. Every Android phone is built on top of open source Linux. The list goes on and on. Open source is a pervasive and proven foundation of our modern technology fabric.

There are myriad benefits of this approach to collaboration. By sharing investment in foundational building blocks, R&D costs for any single stakeholder goes down. Innovation is accelerated by combining resources from multiple organizations. Interoperability is improved because many stakeholders must be able to work together and parallelize their efforts in a modular fashion. Long-term maintainability is addressed because the code is public and community-driven; no single company owns it. Trust and cybersecurity improve through absolute transparency.

LF Energy exists to harness the collaborative power of open source and apply it to the challenges facing the digital energy transition. It is a community of digital experts at leading utilities, vendors, and supporters who are willing to rethink industry norms and find better ways to solve shared problems. We are creating a vibrant, sustainable ecosystem of digital assets that are critical for delivering affordable, reliable, safe and clean energy.