Summary The generation, distribution, and consumption of energy is one of the most critical pieces of infrastructure for the modern world. With the rise of renewable energy there is an accompanying need for systems that can respond in real-time to the availability and demand for electricity. FlexMeasures is an open source energy management system that is designed to integrate a variety of inputs intelligently allocate energy resources to reduce waste in your home or grid. In this episode Nicolas Höning explains how the project is implemented, how it is being used in his startup Seita, and how you can try it out for your own energy needs. Announcements Hello and welcome to Podcast.__init__, the podcast about Python and the people who make it great! When you’re ready to launch your next app or want to try a project you hear about on the show, you’ll need somewhere to deploy it, so take a look at our friends over at Linode. With their managed Kubernetes platform it’s easy to get started with the next generation of deployment and scaling, powered by the battle tested Linode platform, including simple pricing, node balancers, 40Gbit networking, dedicated CPU and GPU instances, and worldwide data centers. And now you can launch a managed MySQL, Postgres, or Mongo database cluster in minutes to keep your critical data safe with automated backups and failover. Go to pythonpodcast.com/linode and get a $100 credit to try out a Kubernetes cluster of your own. And don’t forget to thank them for their continued support of this show! Your host as usual is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing Nicolas Höning about FlexMeasures, an open source project designed to manage energy resources dynamically to improve efficiency Interview Introductions How did you get introduced to Python? Can you describe what FlexMeasures is and the story behind it? What are the primary goals/objectives of the project? The energy sector is huge. Where can FlexMeasures be used? Energy systems are typically governed by a marketplace system. What are the benefits that FlexMeasures can provide for each side of that market? How do renewable sources of energy confuse/complicate the role that the different stakeholders represent? What are the different points of interaction that producers/consumers might have with the FlexMeasures platform? What are some examples of the types of decisions/recommendations that FlexMeasures might generate and how to they manifest in the energy systems? What are the types of information that FlexMeasures relies on for driving those decisions? Can you describe how FlexMeasures is implemented? How have the design and goals of the system changed/evolved since you started working on it? What are the interfaces that you provide for integrating with and extending the functionality of a FlexMeasures installation? What are the operating scales that FlexMeasures is designed for? What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen FlexMeasures used? What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on FlexMeasures? When is FlexMeasures the wrong choice? What do you have planned for the future of FlexMeasures? Keep In Touch Website @nhoening on Twitter LinkedIn Picks Tobias She-Hulk Nicholas Kleo on Netflix Altair Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don’t forget to check out our other shows. The Data Engineering Podcast covers the latest on modern data management. The Machine Learning Podcast helps you go from idea to production with machine learning. Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes. If you’ve learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email hosts@podcastinit.com) with your story. To help other people find the show please leave a review on iTunes and tell your friends and co-workers Links FlexMeasures: Github Linux Energy Foundation Mailing List Twitter EyeQuant Energy Management System OpenEMS ICT == Information and Communications Technology HomeAssistant Podcast Episode FlexMeasures HomeAssistant Plugin Universal Smart Energy Framework PostgreSQL Data Engineering Podcast Episode TimescaleDB Data Engineering Podcast Episode OpenWeatherMap Timely-Beliefs library Flask Click Pyomo scikit-learn sktime LF Energy Flake8 MyPy Podcast Episode Black Arima Model Random Forest The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA