Guest: Maarten Mulder (LinkedIn)
Organization/Company: LF Energy (Twitter)/ Alliander (Twitter)
Show: State of Energy

The Grid eXchange Fabric (GXF) project, which was launched by Alliander, aims to bridge the gap between the device and the software. In this video, Maarten Mulder, PO — GXF at Alliander, talks about how the company works with different devices to gather the data; these devices could be related to public lighting to switch lights on and off, in substations to measure low voltage measurements, and for smart metering.

The way we consume and manage electricity is evolving particularly as we now have to add renewables into the equation. Alliander did a POC in a town in the Netherlands. They found that they needed to think about renewables at the start of a new project and concluded that more measurement is needed to help the infrastructure manage these changing dynamics.

One of the things that is needed to help better handle these changes is standardization, not only to standardize the changes but also the communication methods. Alliander wants to work with gateway devices since they can add new changes to them and add new functionality to their platform quickly. However, the company is interested in learning about other parties’ needs for low-folded measurements and smart metering.

Alliander’s platform is focused on gathering the data that is published on Kafka, allowing other parties to tap into that data and extract whatever value they want from it. Alliander does have an end-to-end solution for low folding measurements where you buy the device and then they can publish the data on Kafka. However, their smart meter application is still closed source.

Starting with LF Energy can be challenging but Alliander is trying to help people get on board quickly using containers to help them get started with their product. From there, they will need to find out from the documentation what to do but Alliander is willing to help users make the first step. Alliander is happy to answer any questions or discuss the possibility of working together with new parties.

This summary was written by Emily Nicholls.