As TMC’s (News - Alert) featured smart grid contributor, Jon Arnold wrote in mid-December, “Smart grid, by nature, is a capital intensive business, making it very difficult for small, software-based companies to get too far along without some major help.” Arnold saw the market as maturing, commenting that major infrastructure vendors were recognizing the need to get beyond basic plumbing.

Green Energy Corp, provider of software engineering services and smart grid management systems, is no small player, and its release of Total Grid open source community is proof of its determination in the market, envisioning smart grid beyond the basic plumbing. In a statement, Glenn Booth, vice president of Marketing at Green Energy Corp, said, “Green Energy Corp’s commitment to advance open source smart grid software will benefit utilities greatly.”

Total Grid, fostering innovation and collaboration, allows developers to contribute and use smart grid related software. Total Grid will host smart grid applications, protocols and Reef/GreenBus functionality, the open source version of Green Energy Corp’s commercialized middleware product. GreenBus platform allows for rapid development of utility applications and is the only open source solution that supports interoperability of legacy and new applications. Green Energy Corp’s engineering team and strategic partners will develop new applications to ride atop a secure platform and convert legacy software to connect with the GreenBus APIs. 

Booth commented, “Our upcoming GreenBus product incorporates best-in-class open source technologies built by expert software developers from around the world. Green Energy Corp reciprocates by contributing GreenBus/Reef, DNP3 and other code back into the open source community.”

Among some of the initial software projects within the Total Grid open source community are:

• DNP3 (Distributed Network Protocol)
• Reef
• Thin Client GUI

“We really liked the idea of being able to review the Green Energy DNP3 code before committing to use it,” said Evan Mezeske, Software Developer for SunEdison (News - Alert), North America's largest solar energy service provider, adding that it would help them avoid any large expenses and time to procure a commercial product. Green Energy Corp’s open-source software solutions enable customers to meet critical business imperatives for compliance, cost efficiency, security and renewable resource integration.

In late Summer 2010 TMC reported, Green Energy Corp merged with Magpie TI, a provider of software engineering services. The merged company is operating as Green Energy Corp and headquartered in Denver, Colo., and focuses on leveraging world-class industry expertise and software engineering skills that offer software and services for utilities, communication and smart energy companies.