Open Renewable Energy Systems (ORES) Working Group

Vision

Generating Power Will Be as Easy as Plug-It-In:

• Ease of Energy Generation: Make generating energy as easy as plugging in a device, thus making the production of energy as simple and straightforward as its consumption.
• Sustainable Energy Future: Build a sustainable energy future through open standardization that democratizes distributed renewable energy and contribute to the power optimization at the grid edge. This includes standardizing platforms such as Virtual Power Plants (VPP) and fostering the growth of distributed energy marketplaces.

Mission Statement

To reimagine the renewable energy sector by developing an open standard architecture, API, and protocol, fostering innovation, accessibility, and sustainability.

Background

The Open Renewable Energy Systems (ORES) Working Group was established following insights gained from the LF Research whitepaper "The Open Source Opportunity for Microgrids: Five Ways to Drive Innovation and Overcome Market Barriers for Energy Resilience". This initiative aims to design a comprehensive power network topology and define functional requirements that advance distributed renewable energy adoption, through standardizing on common architectures, APIs and protocols, making it easier for equipments from different vendors to interoperate, and for individuals and businesses to build their own ORES compliant systems, with a focus on Nanogrids, Microgrids, and eventually, build local/community based Virtual Power Plants, local power exhanges and marketplaces, with the ORES-based Distributed Energy Resources.

Objectives

1. Technical Standard Development: Develop and validate a robust, scalable open standard architecture that includes power network topology and API definitions.
2. Awareness and Outreach:
   • Increase awareness and community building around ORES.
   • Focus on the adoption of ORES by facilitating education, outreach, and collaborative opportunities that showcase the benefits and potential of open renewable energy systems.

Specifications

ORES is a specification that describes the standard components of a renewalbe energy system, and its standard architectures, APIs, protocols among various components of the system, and communication interfaces with the grid and with higher level services. The current specification is here. The design objective of ORES is meant to realize the vision of plug and play energy production and democratized energy ecossystem participation, both as an energy producer and an energy consumer.

Getting Started

To get involved with the ORES Working Group:

• Join the Working Group: Stay updated with the latest discussions and announcements. .

  • Review the contribution guidelines to learn how to contribute to the spec.
  • Join the mailing list here
  • Join the real time discussion/messaging in Signal group here, or take part in discussions in the #ores-wg channel in the LF Energy Slack
  • Attend Meetings: Participate in our regular meetings to discuss progress and new ideas.

• Contribute: Check out our Contribution Guidelines for information on how you can contribute to the project.

Resources

• LF Research Whitepaper
• Contribution Guidelines

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. This is a project under LF Energy and LFESS, more on its Github Repo here.