 Hi, this is Yoosafdin Bharti and welcome to another episode of state of energy and today we have Robert Stig product owner of IT system for flexibility at NXS and Daniel Beach developer of IT systems for flexibility at NXS. Robert Daniel is great to have you folks on the show. Thank you. Thanks Thanks for having us. Yeah, it's my pleasure to have you folks here today We are going to talk about shape shifter project, but before we talk about the project I would love to know a bit about the company so talk about what do you folks do? NXS is one of the largest DSO in the Netherlands. So we are transporting electricity and gas and Yeah, as a company we of course have to do with the energy transitions and all the the new Energy that's coming into our electricity net. If you look at a modern world when you look at energy electricity The word has kind of changed because of renewables. We're also using electric cars of there a lot of folks They have solar panels. We are putting electrons back into the grid as well So from your perspective how it has changed the whole landscape or market Which also means that we will need more I mean solutions to tackle that new kind of challenge I think that's one of the biggest challenges that we all have as a DSO So indeed what you're saying the electricity market is changing fairly rapidly So and that's why we are as a team building like new automated IT systems to have flexibility in the in the electricity grid now Let's talk about the shape shifter project talk about what is the project all about the goal of shape shifter is to have a communication protocol between us as a DSO and What we call aggregators so flexibility providers and we want to standardize that protocol to have a Easy way to communicate about flexibility. Can you talk about what is the need for this project? What was the problem that you are seeing? That you're like hey, no, we need this project We found that we needed a standardized way of communicating to the aggregators to communicate about The power the flexibility that that we that we need from them We we have a process where we predict that something will be overloaded that there will be congestion And then this protocol was suitable for us It's a further development of an existing protocol use staff that was already used within Europe and so we built upon that and we created or we used it as the Universal flexible trading protocol specifically to be able to Cater for bilateral contracts that we can make Agreements and seal the deal with that communication protocol and that's something that wasn't easily possible Can you talk about the original project? Where was it created and when it became part of a lot of energy? we already tested the protocol in like a pilot project and We saw that it was not Yeah, something that was easy to use and something that was also general. So there were a lot of different protocols. So that's why we just That we we contacted our colleague DSOs in the Netherlands and just like In a session we brainstormed of how can we do that in a way that we can benefit all of us so that we can create one protocol for all of the Flexibility providers and DSO in the Netherlands and that's why we started shape shifter to have one protocol in the Netherlands and not different protocols and So that's how we started shape shifter. I think there was also a sense of urgency Because the legislation in the Netherlands was changed. We needed to oblige To the government and we needed to comply with some laws and this protocol was well tested We tested it in some experiments. We tested it in the old forms So it was also a pretty easy decision to go and try to invest with the DSOs in the Netherlands together on getting this Protocol to be able to communicate that to comply to the new Law of congestion management in the Netherlands. Can you talk a bit about what was the new law? Yes, so the new law in the Netherlands says that we have to Give more transport capacity away to our customers then there is technical possible So and the the the capacity that is above the technical limit. We have to solve that with congestion management of flexible flexibility so that the the spread of using of transportation of electricity is like More flattened out during the day So that's the goal of the the the flexibility market to just flatten out the transportation of Of electricity so that we can optimize the use of the electricity net Can you also talk a bit about there are other project LLF? Energy like flesh power is also that which is also protocols, but that is a looking at different problem So when we look at other project LLF energy How closely you work with other projects you learn from them or like help them leverage them sometimes some projects Overlap sometimes there may be gap. A nice thing is that we we closely work together with the the other DSOs Alliander for instance, they also invest heavily into open source and they use even the open staff That's one of the components for Linux Foundation energy for their own forecasting We also look into something that's already In use globally that's open ADR and one of the persons that works for us is the one who Created the the open leader Python Python implementation. That's also part of the Linux Foundation energy And we recently Unfortunately, Robert didn't have time. I visited together with some people from Alliander to Paris to the Linux foundation energy summit 2023 and there we also did a talk together with the other DSO about shape shifter And and there we are also looking into all right What other components are also available of the suite and we look into those and also when we have internal discussions here We try to look. Hey, we now might have some proprietary system. Can we maybe look into? Yeah investigating if one of the LLV components would be a good fit for the future and how would we get there? How mature is the project today? As you said, you know, it was kind of reaction to a Law regulation in the Netherlands. How mature is the project? Is it ready for production? Is it being already used in production? And If you can also talk about the community which is involved with this project, so we are going to production this month It's from the next site. So the project is mature Of course, we didn't test it yet in the wheel production environment That will happen this month or next month so it's usable and the all the the needed code and the testing is done and also the documentation is is completed so It is Producible production bull next to that the gopax platform in the Netherlands who's kind of a broker between the DSOs in the market They already have a full implementation running and they perform some tests in production If you can say it like that and they were successful in that and we also know that in That a company is Scottish Power Energy Networks in combination with Gritim They also have a full implementation already running that they use for their customers But they are an aggregator role as you earlier talking about and the other companies and of course I was in Paris as well. It was kind of great to see all these companies doing open source. How important is Open source for your company. How much open store do you folks do? It's becoming more and more important So I think when I look a couple of years back open source was not used within the indexes organization And now because of the energy transition We see the need to work together with other DSOs and other aggregators to just have one development team to create new IT and Yeah, if you can do it alone But if you do it together you have of course you are you are it's it is cheaper and you also have more impact when you do together and open source It's just like a very good way to do that The role of in nexus as a company also changed like many companies now because of the energy transition a company that formerly only put cables in the ground for electricity and also pipes for gas now changes into an IT company So if you look at the growth that we that we had For the past four years at least if not longer is that we needed to change and I think the first thing is really easy That's the commodity like the office office automation and all that stuff And then I think open source is not at the short list of an IT department to to go do because it's it's it's not easy It it it requires an investment. So it's logical and both Robert myself and also stony answer that you mentioned We're trying to be ambassadors to use more and more open source because we think it's important when we look at folks like you in this case no product like shapefifter and not a product where you monetize from so And also they can help other industries or other players at other DSOs as well And then there's so much code to be written So writing all that code yourself makes no sense when you can collaborate And it's a win-win situation and you can also have a community and you can solve problems faster So if I ask, you know, what would be your advice to other companies who are very early stage of either that because a lot of energy sector They are going through their own transition as well that why they should embrace open source. What value open source brings To their companies. Yeah, I think there are a lot of advantages So of course just one that we mentioned before is is working together and creating like a win-win situation Because you get you can also split the development, but I think it is also a nice way to be not as To have an environment that is that is free and that that you can But because the people that are in an open source communities are really Have an how do I call it? a motivation to to add something do that to that open source community And not only about the money, but also because they want to attribute something to In this case to the energy transition. So you have very you have very easy access to Motivated people that will help you to create like an open source project. So I think that's really nice to see Yeah, I don't know if I have the same correct in English, but there's a saying that says a Alone you're faster, but together and you will get further I think there's nothing in the world that you can do alone anymore So I think there's a necessity to be open to each other and raise each other and then work together because it will get you further Of course when you had GA What kind of things you folks are working on where you're like, hey in the next month This is the challenges. This is the problem. These are features that we should be building Just give us a glimpse. One of the the not technical part is communication because of course when you're developing the open source project and it's not ready for use Then you are really reluctant to communicate because you are a little bit afraid of Communication just so I think the next most important thing is to communicate that that the library is ready and that it can be used So that's that for me. That's that's priority one And maybe for the technical part Daniel you can can add something to that What we're trying to do when we already work working on it for several years So we started the first experiments with the protocol about in 2016 You get a little bit blind and now we are having new people Performing the implementation so they have a fresh look and they notice and ask some questions that we don't see anymore So what we're trying to do now is that all the questions that the new people have while they're implementing it that we try and Contribute that to the documentation of the denomination energy shapeshifter library So whenever somebody is going to implement it a new that there is no Discussion about an interpretation anymore. So we're trying to clarify the documentation of shapeshifter By using the experiences of other people that are now working on it for us that are bringing it into production So that that's what we're trying to do. That's important. Just want to add add one thing and that's At this moment shapeshifter library is only Java So we also want to add a Python library to it So that's also one thing that we want to add This year and then we look at projects like these of course the project is start with solving a specific problem But when you put something in open source only a lot of folks they see hey You know what I can use this project in my use case and it happens I mean Linux kernel is one of the best examples out there. So if I ask you Who else do you think can benefit from this project where you'll sit here? You folks should also come and you know use this project. Yeah, that's a good one We now identified already to use cases what we're doing now is something that we That we strategically chose for with any nexus is capacity limit contracts That's actually a second use case that we also find a purpose for with shapeshifter because the first use case is more like communicating about flexibility and asking somebody hey Can you help me out and now we're using that same protocol? So we're reusing it as a way of limiting people that we have contracted to limit their power So whenever we come up with a new use case We try to implement it and if we talk to somebody that that might also benefit from that use case then Yeah, we we also Communicate that who should get involved or pretty not just like to leverage the project But who should you think that these are the right folks to get involved the project? I think that's a very important question because what we are missing right now is the flexibility providers so we really need aggregators and Service providers that are going to use the protocol on the other side So not on the DSO side, but on the flexibility provider side So we really want to that they join also the technical steering committee and work together with us to like Yeah, make the protocol even better Make shape shift or even better if I can when we look at LF energy you there are so many different projects But when I look at you know a lot of I also cover a cloud and I always talk about a stack You know the stack of application that they like work together radio So I mean the best is a lamp stack if you're in Linux Apache my SQL PHP So if you look at LF energy project and if you're looking at this sector Do you have any kind of vision where you know these projects can work together in Coherence and help instead of like you know trying to patch and creating a Frankenstein monster where everybody's trying to solve their own problem Yeah, I think I think yes I think when somehow we could have like an instruction for aggregators or flex providers that they can easily use the different shape of it the the different elevator projects as one so open staff and open area and shape shifter and they just have to click on one button and it's installed So like a vision for the future then it would be really easy for them to join like the open source community And do you really use the projects Daniel? Do you think any work is going on when you as you said you were in Paris also when you talk that he just we should because LF energy itself isn't literally a new product new foundation We're seeing that right now we are solving basic problem But you know just folks have started to think about better integration all kind of build a stack We're what kind of discussions are you hearing there? I think there's a there's a good opportunity in combining multiple LF E sweet Products that are there together because there is a basic necessity if you look at everybody needs forecasting Let's all use open staff then we can all make those models better and if we have something that goes wrong We can help each other Everybody needs to communicate from an aggregator to a DSO. Let's use shape shifter for that If you look at the aggregator, they have a need to Communicate to the flexibility that they can provide the reconnections. Let's use open ADR for that It's already used in across the globe in America. They use it. So in the United States Let's let's work together. What we notice is that Let's also work more closely together because some of the DSOs in the Netherlands They already Combining the they already have a strategic vision on using open source and they're already trying to combine those products If we as in access also would join forces with them and also combine multiple sources together That would also already greatly help Robert Daniel Thank you so much for taking time out today and not only talk about the of course company shape shifter project But also a larger problem and Daniel and our protocols. Thank you for call to action and also how To kind of create a very coherent, you know, ecosystem of LF energy projects So thanks for that vision as well now love to talk to you folks again whenever then you'll update to the project But I really appreciate your time today. Thank you. Thank you Yeah, thanks for having us