Guest: Benoît Jeanson (LinkedIn)
Company: RTE (Twitter) | Organization: LF Energy (Twitter)
Show: State of Energy 

FledgePOWER is a multi-protocol translation gateway for power systems based on the industrial IoT LF Edge’s Fledge project. The project started 2 years ago and is now slated to go into production. In this episode of State of Energy recorded at the 2023 LF Energy Summit in Paris, Benoît Jeanson, Enterprise Architect at RTE, gives an update on LF Energy’s FledgePOWER project.

Highlights of this video interview:

• Jeanson feels this year’s LF Energy Summit brought a lot of excitement and a sense of achievement. There is now real momentum as more and more people know about LF Energy and are interested in joining the community.
• FledgePOWER is a multi-protocol translation gateway for power systems based on the industrial IoT LF Edge’s Fledge project. The project started 2 years ago and is now slated to go into production.
• There are a lot of communication protocols within utilities, between transmission system operators (TSO), distribution network operators (DSO), from the substation to the data centers, and from the substation to the scatter. Because there are many layers of protocols, there is a need to be able to translate from one protocol to another.
• Jeanson says that FledgePOWER is now well-known in the energy community and there is interest from several utilities. Consequently, the Fledge project is also garnering attention. At the end of the day, they are the same code: Fledge is for the edge world while FledgePOWER is geared toward the energy sector.
• Because the FledgePOWER community is driven by the needs of the energy sector, LF Energy is focusing on the multi-protocol gateway at the moment. Other ideas and use cases such as router protocol gateway and gathering information at the edge are still in the ideation or experimentation stages.
• In power systems, information exchange occurs at different levels – local, central level, or microgrid. Information must be gathered and broadcast to the right people in real-time. FledgePOWER is positioned to do just that. It has the Fledge advantage of being able to process at the edge. Even if you’re no longer connected or triggered by something from the central level, you can still implement some algorithms and have local management.
• A microgrid is for small networks that are isolated or connected with a weak link to a broader grid. You need to manage the system, balance the energy, and optimize locally to avoid congestion.
• What’s ahead: Extend the basis with more protocols. Gather and process data from phasor measurement units (PMU).
• Jeanson would like to thank the LF Edge community and the Fledge project for their help and support. Even though they’re in a separate industrial area, having the collaborative mindset of doing things together and sharing knowledge in order to build something with global impact is exciting.

This summary was written by Camille Gregory.