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New open source initiative integrates and builds a data platform and tools to accelerate grid planning and energy infrastructure deployments worldwide
PRAGUE, Oct. 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Open Source Summit Europe – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced the launch of OpenGrid, a new initiative building open source infrastructure to modernize power grid planning worldwide. Hosted by the Linux Foundation, OpenGrid creates a neutral, interoperable foundation that allows planners to work across the commercial and open source software they already use, helping reduce the time, cost and technical barriers involved in planning the infrastructure needed to meet rapidly growing electricity demand.
Grid planning has become a critical bottleneck as electricity demand grows, new data center and industrial loads come online and more generation and storage seek connection. More than 2,500
gigawatts of generation, storage and large-load projects are currently pending in grid connection queues worldwide, while annual grid investment needs to roughly double to more than $600 billion by 2030. Meeting long-term energy needs will require adding or replacing 80 million kilometers of power lines by 2040, yet planning remains constrained by fragmented data, incompatible software and modeling capabilities that are inaccessible to many institutions and countries.
“Open source has repeatedly shown that shared architecture and interoperability accelerate innovation across entire industries,” said Jim Zemlin, CEO of the Linux Foundation. “OpenGrid will bring the proven model of open collaboration to grid planning for faster and more reliable deployment. The Linux Foundation’s neutral governance will ensure durability, longevity and usability of the technologies that support essential public-interest infrastructure.”
OpenGrid is not developing a single replacement for existing grid planning software. Instead, it provides a shared data and interoperability layer that allows existing commercial and open source tools to work together. Its foundational efforts will include open standards and schemas, programmatic APIs and a centralized Data Hub for validated, model-ready datasets. Its first lighthouse application, the OpenGrid Translator, is in development for release in 2027 and will enable data and models to move between widely used commercial platforms and open source tools.
Access to modern planning capabilities is particularly uneven in fast-growing markets. At the same time, emerging economies are expected to account for nearly 80% of global electricity demand growth through 2030. OpenGrid aims to give planning teams everywhere access to high-quality modeling capabilities, while enabling regulators, advocates and other stakeholders to inspect the models and data informing major infrastructure decisions.
“Reliable electricity supports healthier lives, stronger communities and economic opportunity, but delivering it requires credible plans. Today, too many plans rely on data others cannot verify and tools much of the world cannot afford,” said Alice Yake, vice president of BE-GRIDS and chair of the OpenGrid Management Committee. “OpenGrid changes that: open data, open standards and access to planning tools that any utility, regulator or country can inspect and use.”
Over time, the OpenGrid ecosystem plans to expand to include open solvers, no-code graphical interfaces, standardized planning workflows and integrations that use AI to support data preparation. By providing transparent, repeatable and accessible planning infrastructure, OpenGrid aims to help planners, infrastructure owners, regulators and communities work from a common technical foundation and make infrastructure decisions with greater confidence faster.
OpenGrid launches with support from Breakthrough Energy GRIDS, Global Grid Catalyst, Connected Grid Initiative and Google.org, with technical delivery partners including Open Energy Transition, Tapestry, TransitionZero and QXT Energy.
Organizations, researchers, regulators and community members interested in contributing to OpenGrid or learning more are encouraged to visit https://www.opengrid.org.
Supporting Quotes
“Electricity systems are going through some pretty radical changes, with many new variable producers, storage and consumers connecting to the grid. OpenGrid supports the infrastructure we need to get quick consensus on how the energy transition should proceed, and to foster the innovation we need to drive it forward faster.”
– Tom Brown, Professor of Digital Transformation in Energy Systems, TU Berlin and Managing Director, PyPSA Labs
“Planners shouldn’t have to choose between the tools they already use and the open ones now emerging. Building enterprise-grade, open modeling software with Scenario Builder showed us how much time is lost moving data and models between formats. OpenGrid’s shared standards and translators tackle that directly, and we’re glad to help build them, so that planners anywhere can pick up a model, inspect it, use it and make decisions that cut the time it takes to build clean energy at scale.”
– Matt Gray, Co-Founder and CEO, TransitionZero
“Accelerating scientific progress requires turning foundational research and open data into real-world solutions. Power grids are among humanity’s most complex engineering systems, yet modeling them is too often limited by fragmented tools and closed data. OpenGrid will provide the shared digital foundation needed to make faster, more evidence-based decisions and ultimately strengthen our global grid infrastructure.”
– Joseph Hassine, Scaled Impact Lead, Google.org
“OpenGrid is the catalyst that the power and energy industry needs to drive new software innovations that ultimately will produce better and faster decision making for the power grid. We keep hearing that these times are unprecedented and yet we have seen very few changes in the power software space. OpenGrid’s ambitions to demonstrate that open source can be the driver for much needed innovation is something that QXT Energy is enthusiastic to support.”
– José Daniel Lara, Co-Founder and CTO, QXT Energy
“The accelerating complexity of the modern power system demands better integration of economic and reliability planning tools, as well as coordinated planning across the transmission and distribution networks. OpenGrid is tackling this ambitious challenge by enabling these diverse tools, whether open source or commercial, to work together and by providing validated datasets. This has the potential to revolutionize grid planning across the globe.”
– Debbie Lew, Executive Director, Energy Systems Integration Group (ESIG)
“At OpenET, we make water use data open and accessible, so I’ve seen firsthand how a shared baseline builds trust among diverse stakeholders. That experience convinces me that open data infrastructure is essential to sound resource management. By giving planners, regulators and communities a common ground truth they can all inspect and understand, OpenGrid will help them make the decisions the energy transition demands.”
– Luis Villa, Board Chair, OpenET, Inc.
“Transparent and neutral governance ensures that all interested users have access to the tools in this initiative. It allows users to decide what is best for their purposes, and it keeps the door open for new tool development to foster innovation and avoid lock-in. Transparency in decision-making creates community buy-in. When parties come together on shared infrastructure, working toward common objectives and the methods and results can be vetted by many parties, this builds the trust and sense of fairness and legitimacy that will be necessary for OpenGrid to be successful.”
– Karin Wadsack, Executive Director, Global Power System Transformation Consortium
About the Linux FoundationThe Linux Foundation is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, hardware, standards, and data. Linux Foundation projects, including Linux, Kubernetes, Model Context Protocol (MCP), OpenChain, OpenSearch, OpenSSF, OpenStack, PyTorch, Ray, RISC-V, SPDX and Zephyr, provide the foundation for global infrastructure. The Linux Foundation is focused on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.
The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of the Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page: www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Media ContactThe Linux Foundationpr@linuxfoundation.org
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