Avista Development, a subsidiary of Avista Corp and Duke Energy announced a joint investment in Open Energy Solutions Inc. (OES) to develop open source software for grid edge technology solutions. This marks the first time multiple utilities have collaborated to create open source software, spurring innovation and creating a new market for this technology.
For an insider’s perspective, we reached out for comment to Curt Kirkeby, a Fellow Electrical Engineer at Avista responsible for applied smart grid R&D.
Avista is very pleased to announce a partnership with Duke Energy to create OpenDSP, an open source, utility defined, operating system for the grid. For far too long, utilities have struggled to advance grid operations with technology that has been costly, difficult to integrate, typically built on antiquated information architectures and focused solely on centralized solutions. Many past efforts to deliver smart grid solutions for utilities and customers in the northwest have validated the challenges and exposed the opportunity for OpenDSP. SmartGrid Northwest has successfully led efforts for collaborative learning such that members can achieve improved interoperability and deliver distributed grid solutions.
“OpenDSP will provide a foundational code base or operating system, much like iOS or Android is for smart phones, from which any utility or vendor can deliver solutions that will inherently work with each other. SmartGrid Northwest is in a unique position with its combination of leading edge utility, research/academic, and vendor members to inform the development of OpenDSP for maximum capability and to help accelerate innovation on the OpenDSP core.
“Open Energy Solutions, OES, will be developing the initial version of OpenDSP. For anyone interested in participating, there are many opportunities to define the open source business model, the functional requirements, and the underlying architecture. Please feel free to contact Curtis Kirkeby, Avista Utilities, for more information.”
