Open Source in Energy Transition with Alex Thornton

This is Textron tv. Hey everyone. Welcome back here to techron tv.

Our next guest, I believe it's his first time on here, and we're excited to have him on. His name's Alex Thornton. Alex is the executive director of the LF Linux Foundation Energy Foundation, and I know what you guys are thinking out there.

Linux Foundation. We love Linus Linux, cloud native, CDF, all of the great. I think there's something like 40 different border organizations underneath the Linux Foundation.

Linux Energy found LF Energy though. What is, what's that about and why? Well, Alex is gonna tell us all about it as well as telling us a little bit about himself.

Alex, welcome to Text Drunk tv. It's great to have you on here. Thanks, Alex.

Before we good to be here. Thank you. I'm sorry.

Um, before jumping into LF Energy Foundation, let's, let's spend a little bit of time, you know, how did you wind up being the ED here? Yeah, well, I'm, I'm a little bit of an accidental technologist. So my career started in, in clean energy.

Uh, so I did a lot of energy policy analysis for the European Union, uh, utility scale solar consulting. So I'm, I'm an energy guy, or at least that's how I think of myself. Uh, but then I eventually moved to San Francisco to work for a solar data analytics company, um, and then just ended up cutting my teeth in the tech sector.

So data science, uh, software engineering, grew with the company, ended up VP of engineering there. Uh, and then worked in a number of different tech leadership roles for a variety of climate tech companies. Uh, eventually being CTO of a company called Imperfect Foods, which was sustainable online grocery, uh, and then most recently CTO at a granular carbon accounting startup called ClearTrace.

And, um, what I discovered over my kind of technical journey, we're making a lot harder on ourselves than it needs to be in the energy sector. Um, so we're in the midst of this like fundamental energy transition in the world, you know, solar panels, windmills, uh, electric cars. Um, and what's not necessarily obvious is that's also a digital transition as well.

That's, so I, I think it is like a digital energy transition that we're going through right now. Um, but we're not really good at collaborating on the digital side of it yet. So, in, in my own career, I've built three energy data platforms that basically have done the same exact thing at three different companies.

Um, and that's a great album for open source to solve. We shouldn't have individual companies solving the same problems. And, you know, uh, efforts like the Lenox Foundation kind of facilitate this collaboration to prevent duplication of effort.

So that's what got me to LF Energy. Really. I love it.

What a great story. You know, you're right. I mean, the idea of, and a big part of the success of the Linux Foundation has been this idea of fostering coopetition, right?

But it, it's not just competitors who sit at the table. The great thing about Linux Foundation, of course, is that in the typical foundation, you have a great mix of end users, advocates, producer, uh, you know, the whole community, everyone, you know, there's a seat at the table for representatives of the entire community. And I think that's the special sauce that LF has hid on and has duplicated with all of these, you know, or sister foundations, whatever you want to call them, including I think the newest one, the Infra Infrastructure Foundation, which was just announced over in, in London when we were out there.

Um, now what, and I get right, that the, the future is certainly digital. The present is digital too. And digital is an integral part of efficient, sustainable energy use.

Like, I don't want to get political. Some people take offense when you use the word sustainable today, such as the state of, of our lives that you got, you can't use a word like that. But, um, but you know, how, how does this give us some concrete examples of open source or, or digital control over energy production?

Distribution consumption? Sure. I mean, it's, it's absolutely pervasive already, right?

You have, you know, uh, operating centers or any utility in the entire world that's collecting, you know, millions of data points from, you know, internet of things type sensors that are deployed all along the grid and giving, uh, the folks who operate that control room, uh, observability over what's happening on the grid right now. You know, what do they need to be worried about? They need to be forecasting your energy consumption, you know, one hour ahead, a day ahead, a week ahead.

Um, they need to be coordinating with all the different power plants. So already it's a, it's a very digital system that exists. Um, I think the opportunity is, it's a very conservative industry overall, right?

Uh, fairly resistant to change. And, and there are reasons for that, right? You don't want your power to go out, uh, you don't want anybody to get electrocuted, right?

So, uh, safety and reliability are the top priorities for grid operators. And one of the, the impacts of that in terms of technolo technological innovation is it's hard for them to adopt, you know, kind of modern tools and modern practices that in the IT sector, you know, and cloud data centers, for example, um, you know, that's already being done years ago, right? So I would say kind of the, the energy sector is 10 to 20 years be behind the IT sector in terms of digital best practices, uh, in terms of tooling, software collaboration, best practices.

So, you know, you mentioned that the Linux Foundation or secret sauce a bit is, you know, this collaboration with all the different stakeholders at the table. And with LF Energy, actually we started with the grid operators. So the, the French transmission system operator, rt, uh, and Alland at Dutch DSO were the first, uh, you know, contributing members to LF Energy.

And they did that because they, they saw what was available to them on the market being sold to them from vendors, and it just didn't scratch the rich, you know, they wanted to move faster, they wanted to innovate more, and so they decided to go all in on open source. And it's not because they wanna just, you know, create, maintain, um, their own software, but really they're about kind of planting seeds to shift the market and say, Hey, here are the types of solutions that we wanna buy from the vendor community. And it's been extremely successful there for them so far.

So, you know, they're seven years into that journey, and there are a number of open source projects that have since been commercialized, since been adopted by a number of different vendors and are literally running the electric grid in, in many places in the world right now. Absolutely. Alex, you mentioned kind of the first two contributing members, both the one French, one Dutch.

Give us an idea of at LF Energy, some of the other, you know, members that our audience may or may not be familiar with. Sure. I mean, it's, it's a lot of household names.

Um, you know, so utilities maybe not so much unless they're year utility. Uh, so we have 10 utilities spread around the world, so RT and Allander in Europe. Uh, we have a, a handful of others in Europe as well.

Uh, last year we grew quite a bit in North America, so Hydro Quebec, uh, joined as a contributing member, uh, Southern California Edison in, in California, joined as a contributing member. So we're, we're increasing our geographical, um, coverage on the utility side. And then on the vendor side, um, you know, GE Renova is a, is a huge one that's super active.

They have two really great projects that they're working on. Uh, Google and Microsoft are also very active with the ecosystem. Um, and the reason for that, you know, they have, uh, very ambitious decarbonization goals as, as major energy users and also energy, you know, they can't do what they do without electricity as the input.

Everything you hear about AI and, and data centers, you need electricity as an input. Uh, so energy is key for them. Uh, and then we have a number of, uh, kind of medium and smaller players as well that maybe folks are, are less familiar with.

But we have, uh, about 30 contributing members now and really a great cross-section of the industry. And we haven't mentioned yet. What, what's the website for the, uh, LF Energy Foundation?

Pretty simple. org. That's a good one.

Um, Alex, of course, it's, and again, going back to the LF model, it's not all these big companies that make the community by themselves. How can people watching on here, how can they get involved? Yeah, yeah.

So we, you know, we're constantly having, uh, webinars to, to demonstrate what our projects, what our members are doing. We host a number of events. So our, our big annual event is in Europe, uh, LF Energy Summit in Germany, September, uh, and we'll be hosting one in Montreal as well for our first North America Energy Summit.

Um, you know, as with any open source, right? All the code is out there, and we have, you know, regular meetups, uh, and virtual meetups, so people can actually like, meet with the technical steering committees, ask questions, figure out how they can get involved. Um, you know, so in, in that sense, it's not all that different from any other open source community.

It's all out there. And, and if you're interested, come join up. Absolutely.

You know, one of the things I'd like to touch on, if you don't mind, Alex, is this isn't just, um, alternative energy. We're talking about, you know, how to make our windmills more efficient or make better solar or, or, you know, uh, sustainable. As I mentioned before, when you're a grid operator, you, you basically, you're taking kilowatts from wherever you can get 'em, right?

And at, at a reasonable price, of course. And, and normalizing those into your grid. And, you know, I don't know if people really understand all that goes in, you know, like what's the life cycle, if you will, of, of that electricity that eventually is reaching your office or your house or, or what have you, right?

It, it, whether it, it starts off as use the term clean or dirty, but that's a bad word. But, you know, whether it starts off from coal or oil or gas or nuclear or, or wind or solar or geothermal, right? Somehow we take that energy and we need to get it to people and, and, and, and the machines that consume it.

And today, that is increasingly, increasingly a digital exercise, right? Absolutely. Or controlled and managed by digital, by digital means.

And that, that's, that's the LF energy ballpark, right? That's your playing field. Yeah.

Though, you know, I I, I, I think I'm gonna take exception to the idea of alternative energy. It's not alternative anymore. You know, uh, maybe 40 years ago, putting solar panels on your roof, you were a crunchy hippie, uh, all like the, the vast majority of new energy installed around the world is solar, solar plus battery storage.

Like that, that's the big winner with wind not far behind. So, you know, in the US where, uh, you know, uh, Texas doesn't necessarily lean politically crunchy hippie, uh, but they have a very open competitive energy market. Um, and when solar and battery storage are far and away what's being installed, uh, as net new additions on the grid.

So, uh, that's great news because it's, it's cheap, it's reliable, it's safe, it's, and that's really the mission of grid operators is to deliver cheap, reliable, or I should say affordable, reliable, safe energy. Uh, I think, yes, there are, you know, political opinions around clean and what constitutes clean. Uh, I definitely fall on the side of, uh, climate change is a real threat to society, and therefore we should be producing clean energy.

But good news is, you know, solar winds on all fronts. Um, and so in, in terms of helping grid operators deliver on their mission of affordable, reliable, safe energy, that's absolutely a digital process. And that's where LF Energy plays.

I love it. J just for the record, I, I've, I'm on the side of, of climate change is real too. I think most sane people who believe in science are, but be that as it may, uh, you know, we, we live in interesting times, and I'll leave it at that right now.

Okay. Um, you know, I, for instance, I live here in Florida, and I, I actually looked into Sunshine State, The Sunshine State, I looked into solar, my house, right? And I mean, if you believe the contractor, man, I, you know, I would convert the cost within seven years.

I, I, that's how, I mean, I would, it would be a hundred percent. I, I'd be feeding a little back to the grid even, um, until they did away with the subsidies recently here and, you know, the, the incentive programs, because mm-hmm. It's Florida.

Um, yeah, I mean, that, that's what we're working towards though, is, you know, this stuff needs to compete on its own merit, right? Yep. And so solar without subsidies is, is a winner.

Um, I think it's just, you know, making sure that we, we have the correct infrastructure in place to handle, you know, it is different, you know, solar, uh, the sun doesn't always shine, right? You can't always control when solar panels are producing. So you add in batteries, okay, now you have solar that needs to work together with batteries.

You need some controlling mechanisms for charging and discharging and optimizing that. Um, and then, you know, you have electric cars, electric cars and solar that are like peanut butter and jelly, great match because it's, you know, electric car is just a storage mechanism for this bad energy. So, you know, it does require some rethinking of, you know, our, our relationship with energy, uh, you know, how variable is the generation versus the consumption.

But, um, you know, competing on its own merits is really what it's all about. Let's forget about the subsidies. Excellent.

Electric car. Own it too. I'll add, um, you know, we put, we put a charger right in the garage, in our garage, and, uh, it works great, you know, and, and the, the Chargers, you know, it's, it plugs in like a two 20 line, you know, like a dryer line kind of thing.

And man, it's easy. Anyway, Alex, you know, this is a big mission though, right? This is a big mission.

It's, it's an, it's an exciting, I think called sort of new frontier, if you will, for the Lennox Foundation as well. Um, we'd love to have you come back on and keep us posted of what's going on. I'd love to maybe next time dive into some specific projects, you know, that are under your auspices here and, and, and talk about that.

Maybe we get some people behind those projects on with you. Sounds great. Yeah.

Happy to do it. Alright. When was the event that we got to one you said was in Quick Quebec and one's in Germany?

Right, so we we're in Achin, Germany, September 10th and 11th. Uh, that's our big gall of Energy Summit. Uh, and then we'll have a, a bit of a smaller one, but, uh, it'll be our first one in North America for LF Energy Summit, uh, in Montreal, October 3rd.

Beautiful. Hey, best of luck. org.

That's right. Yep. Go check it out folks.

Alex, you're doing good work, man. Thank you so much for coming here on Text Drunk TV and keep it up. We're gonna take a break.

We'll be back in a little bit.