LF Energy TAC Meeting Minutes

December 10, 2024

Attendance

Voting member attendance

  • Maarten Mulder
  • Clément Bouvier
  • Nico Rikken, proxy for Jonas van den Bogaard
  • Peter Mitri, RTE, proxy for Sophie Frasnedo
  • Antonello Monti
  • Boris Dolley
  • Art Pope
  • Yixing Xu
  • Bryce Bartmann

Voting members not in attendance

  • Travis Sikes

Other attendees

  • Alex Thornton, The Linux Foundation
  • John Mertic, The Linux Foundation
  • Yarille Ortiz, The Linux Foundation
  • Dan Brown, The Linux Foundation
  • Vassilis Sakas
  • Arila Barnes
  • Manuel Ziegler
  • Victor Lu

Meeting Recording: here

Meeting Deck: here

Notes

John Mertic called the meeting to order at 8:05 am US Pacific Time.

Opening and General Updates

Mertic reviewed the agenda.

Slack Discussion

Mertic introduced a conversation regarding the current version of Slack, outlining general concerns with Slack, including history limitations, accessibility issues in corporate environments, and the clunky public access feature. He also mentioned the cost of Slack Pro (around $15-20k) and questioned if Slack was the right long-term solution.

Mertic presented alternatives: Discord: Free, addresses history issues, but might be blocked by corporate firewalls due to its association with gaming, and Zulip: Similar to Slack, has an open-source program offering free licenses, better public access, and is less likely to be blocked.

Manuel Ziegler shared EVerest’s experience using Zulip. Ziegler shared their positive experience, highlighting its structure, searchability, and open-source friendliness. He noted potential drawbacks, such as fewer plugins and a potentially overwhelming channel list.

Alex Thornton clarified that projects are free to choose their own platform, but LF Energy should offer an officially supported option, suggesting Zulip. Boris Dolley emphasized the need for alignment and suggested discussing the migration at the company and project levels.

Mertic asked TSC leaders to discuss Slack migration with their communities and provide feedback at the following meeting in January.

Governing Board Goals and Objectives

Thornton reviewed the LF Energy vision and presented the high-level objectives. He highlighted the focus in that LF Energy is a community for digital professionals collaborating on industrial-grade technology platforms and practical standards for the energy transition.

He said the target audience is software engineers and digital natives working in the energy sector, powering utilities, with expansion into related areas like EV charging, carbon accounting, and battery technology.

Thornton discussed key objectives such as increasing the quantity and quality of power and utility ecosystems in the EU and US, cultivating utility adoption of the Carbon Data Specification Consortium, growing project and membership engagement around satellite domains (EV charging, data centers), developing a scalable framework for thought leadership and policy advocacy, and achieve operational excellence.

Boris Dolley highlighted the importance of open data as an echo and suggested adding an objective to cultivate data release practices among utilities and TSOs.

2025 TAC Goals and Objectives

Mertic outlined potential TAC goals, including:

  • Improving Special Interest Groups (SIGs) through office hours and better alignment.
  • Prioritizing security audits for projects.
  • Revisiting the project lifecycle.
  • Evaluating the landscape.
  • Integrating LFESS into the annual review process.
  • Organizing project workshops at the LF Energy Summit.
  • Revitalizing TAC engagement and strategy.
  • Action Item: Gather feedback on these goals and continue the discussion in the new year.

Marketing and PR Updates

Dan Brown provided marketing and PR updates, including a successful Trolie webinar with a technical focus and noted upcoming webinars for Power Grid Model.

He announced the launch of new websites for several projects and upcoming events.

Next Meeting Agenda

Mr. Mertic presented the agenda for the next meeting of the LF Energy TAC, scheduled for 21 January 2025 at 8:00 a.m. US Pacific Time/11:00 a.m. US Eastern Time/5:00 p.m. Central European Time.

  • General Updates
  • Marketing and PR Updates
  • Possible new project presentation