OpenLEADR 3.0: Initial Traction and Future Plans

Before diving in, let’s take a moment to explore what demand response is and why it plays such a critical role in the electricity grid — both today and in the future.

The Importance of Demand Response

In simple terms: demand response (DR) is all about enabling large electricity consumers to dynamically adjust their consumption patterns, in order to optimize the use of our existing physical grid infrastructure without requiring massive expansions that take years, or even decades, to realize.

In the Netherlands, this issue is particularly urgent. Economic activity is already being impacted as approximately two-thirds of the country faces insufficient grid transport capacity. A quick look at the Dutch "capacity map" reveals the strain: businesses and individuals alike are stuck waiting for connection upgrades — or even initial connections. This bottleneck directly hurts economic growth.

Implementing DR programs offers a practical solution. By dynamically sending price signals or usage limits to large consumers, Distribution System Operators (DSOs) can reduce peak loads and alleviate pressure on the grid. These signals can target end-user devices directly or be routed through a gateway computer managing multiple devices behind it.

OpenLEADR 3.0

Back to our work: a free, open-source Rust implementation of version 3.0 of OpenADR co-funded by ElaadNL, the Knowledge & Innovation center for the joint Dutch grid operators.

Now that it has become part of the Linux Foundation Energy (LF Energy) OpenLEADR project, we refer to it as either OpenLEADR 3.0, or openleadr-rs, after its repository name. For the foreseeable future, it will co-exist with the OpenADR 2.0b implementation written in Python that’s still part of OpenLEADR as well.

Why Rust

Choosing Rust for OpenLEADR 3.0 was an easy decision for us. It is the technology we’ve specialized in over the past seven years. More importantly, our experience building several different internet protocol implementations in Rust (including NTP and TSP) has convinced us that Rust is the right tool for the job.

Some of the relevant benefits of Rust:

• Memory safety: Rust eliminates an important class of usually impactful vulnerabilities, the ones you don’t want in your protocol implementation that many applications will depend on in the future
• High performance with low resource footprint: Rust applications have both.
• Ease of deployment: Rust produces easy-to-deploy binaries that can be deployed in many different environments.

As Holger Rapp, CTO of Qwello, puts it:

“OpenADR in Rust is perfect for infrastructure that demands reliability. An open-source implementation of OpenADR 3.0 ensures interoperability across different vendors, keeping integration headaches at bay and making this the smart choice for future-proof energy infrastructure.”

Project status

The project is currently in a decent state, although we haven’t yet published an official field-test-ready release. More on that below.

In particular, the project features an extensive README and CI that runs our automated test suite. The OpenADR Alliance’s test suite — used to verify compliance with the OpenADR 3.0 specification — can be run locally. As the image in the README shows, all tests pass except those related to the subscription feature. This is intentional as we’ve deliberately left out that feature because it’s based on webhooks. In a follow-up article, we’ll dive into our considerations, and the alternative solution we propose, so stay tuned!

Early Traction

Becoming part of OpenLEADR has benefitted our work greatly. OpenLEADR's reputation in the open-source energy space and LF Energy being recognized as a neutral collaboration space have caused people to take note of our work within just two months of publishing.

• First, we’re happy to share that ElaadNL has started testing and verifying OpenLEADR 3.0 with multiple partners. Expect updates from their side soon.
• Secondly, we are currently working with an overseas utility that started experimenting with OpenLEADR 3.0.
• Finally the EVerest project, an open-source software stack for EV charging stations, is finishing its integration of OpenLEADR 3.0, enabling EVerest powered EV charging stations to align with future grid requirements.

Next step: Field-test-ready release

At this point, our first major milestone is to deliver an official field-test-ready release. We aim to achieve this as soon as we can provide potential users with greater certainty about the long-term sustainability of the project.

Funding open-source Demand Response

In our view, the key to long-term sustainability of OpenLEADR 3.0 is to build a small but dedicated community of knowledgeable maintainers.

The software will remain free to use. However, properly maintaining, developing, and ensuring ongoing commitment requires dedicated resources, now and in the future. For this, we need your support.

Trifecta Tech Foundation ensures that any financial support is allocated responsibly and sustainably.

Trifecta Tech Foundation

Trifecta Tech Foundation is a nonprofit public benefit organization that provides a long-term home for open-source projects that are crucial for critical infrastructure. Trifecta Tech's mission is to make critical infrastructure software safer by decreasing attack surface: by building software that is robust and inherently safer.

The foundation will act as the fundraising entity for OpenLEADR 3.0 and will provide complete transparency about how funds are allocated — for example, outlining what portion supports Tweede golf’s core team and what portion goes to other maintainers.

Trifecta Tech Foundation is an associate member of the Linux Foundation, OpenSSF and the OpenInfra Foundation.

Get involved!

In addition to fundraising, we will remain actively involved in OpenLEADR’s technical steering committee, collaborate with the OpenADR Alliance to further develop the proposed OpenADR 3.1 specification, and, as Tweede golf, assist organizations interested in piloting with or validating this software.

If your organization is considering a demand response pilot or if you are interested in contributing to this work in any capacity — be it financially or as an open-source maintainer — we’d love to hear from you! Together, let’s enable DR programs globally and make a meaningful impact on the energy transition!