Last year was all about building our community and piloting our model. This blog is about what motivated me to start a non-profit focused on energy and open source and the mission that will guide us in the future.

Climate change is evident to all of us in the face of the floods in Pakistan killing more than 1700 people,  the fires in Los Angeles destroying more than 10,000 homes, and the draught in Southern Africa, creating water shortage and famine for more than 5 countries. There is urgency to do something about the impact of climate change every day.  It can be as simple as walking and sorting garbage.  It can be about energy equity and renewable sources of generation. 

Five years ago, in the face of climate disaster I pledged to invest in a solar microgrid and take the learnings to scale to any community.  That investment cost is not an easy decision for people of average income in the US, and beyond reach in many developing countries. 

My journey has taken me through startups in energy storage, EV infrastructure, and grid AI and last year I launched the non-profit, Energy IoT Open Source. Its mission is to democratize the microgrid and enable micro-utilities for communities worldwide. 

Since then, we have joined forces with Linux Foundation Energy (LFE) and now lead the LFE Hyphae micgrogrid program and maintain LFE OpenLeADR 2.0b, another project that supports dynamic energy pricing and Virtual Power Plant (VPP) use cases.   

Open source can be a sustainable path for many energy solutions and a viable option for reducing the cost of microgrids by opening not only the software components but also the hardware and solution blueprints. 

The energy space is hard science and through open source this knowledge can be shared across the globe and young people can practice skills they learn in real scenarios.  The job market is not kind to people without domain experience.  Open source is a way to demonstrate your skills with an opportunity for mentorship and peer review. 

Open source can be the home for all the common features that any ClimateTech venture in this space will need to address.  What inspires me is the growing community of collaborators and volunteers willing to donate time and knowledge for this cause and share their past experience and microgrid solutions for the common good. 

There are ambitions to open source as much as possible of the microgrid system extending the model to hardware, with notable success in the field with projects funded by enAccess foundation. 

This year we get a chance to apply our collective efforts to at least one community in Cameroon.  The goal is not to just build another microgrid but to establish a pattern of collaboration that brings forward the best of both worlds -  shared knowledge and local commercial models for sustainability through the power of open source.

It started last year, at the LF Energy Summit 2024 in Brussels, Belgium.  Following the demo of “How open source can enable your next microgrid community project?”,  Dr Rodrigues Kwate Kwate, Ambassador of the Linux Foundation Energy and  a member of the Task Force on Digitalization at the Group of Experts on Energy Efficiency at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) reached out to me:

“Currently, I am working with off-grid communities in Africa, focusing on renewable energy projects. I am particularly interested in developing a microgrid project for these communities, and I believe there could be potential synergies between our areas of expertise.”

Fast forward to 2025, and now we have established an LFX Mentorship program to benefit those communities.  I am inviting Dr. Kwate to share his story of organizing the communities in Cameroon for the next blog post in this series, and I am inviting you, to support our crowdfunding efforts.