In August, Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL) announced that VOLTTRON, an innovative open source energy data platform, will migrate to the not-for-profit Eclipse Foundation.
The announcement constitutes an important new chapter in the development of VOLTTRON, the development of which was initiated by PNNL in 2012 and has benefited from an estimated $10 million of investment over the last six years.
VOLTTRON can now be downloaded from www.eclipse.org and the Eclipse Foundation will serve as the steward of “Eclipse VOLTTRON” as an open source project.
Why is this a significant development?
As a project of the Eclipse Foundation, the Eclipse VOLTTRON platform will benefit from services offered by the Foundation including project governance, IP management, and community development.
At ACE IoT Solutions, we have seen first-hand the unique value of the VOLTTRON platform. For the City of Washington DC, energy data made observable by the VOLTTRON platform powers several use cases, including data-driven commissioning, risk-management related to power purchase agreements and participation in Demand Response and Peak Shaving initiatives.
For the City of Washington DC, these use cases would not be possible if the data was not made observable via a cost-effective, vendor-neutral and technology agnostic platform.
Now that VOLTTRON is governed by the Eclipse Foundation’s clear rules for IP management and benefits from the Foundation’s expertise developing open source communities, more and more organizations will be able to leverage the platform as an open source energy information management tool.
Congratulations to Pacific Northwest National Lab and the Eclipse Foundation for taking this important step.
