Bill Gates fund plans new operating system to help rewire world's power grids

Breakthrough Energy, the innovation fund of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, is launching a new open-source operating system to help countries build new electricity grids better able to take on new wind and solar power.

Building new grid infrastructure is crucial to the energy transition, which otherwise risks being hobbled by a lack of capacity to bring new renewables resources online.

Now Breakthrough Energy has launched its Grid Modelling Project, an open-source platform that it said will enable any part of the world to build a 21st century clean grid by improving grid planning, forecasting and integration of clean energy.

It made the announcement at the Breakthrough Energy Summit that is taking place in London this week, with Gates and US climate envoy John Podesta among those speaking at the event.

Breakthrough aims with its latest project to build a platform that will act as an "operating system" for grid decarbonisation, adaptable to any existing models and regions for comprehensive and effective planning.

Without accurate modelling, Breakthrough says that utilities and developers “can't justify investments to regulators, and markets can't create viable products,” threatening the “urgent need for new grid infrastructure.”

A centralised platform for grid modelling will it said “integrate various models, improving planning, decision-making, forecasting, reliability, and clean energy integration, driving progress towards a cleaner and more reliable electricity grid.”

By providing accurate models that incorporate the variability and distributed nature of renewable energy, the platform will help plan and optimise the integration of renewables into the grid.

Integrating huge numbers of variable wind and solar farms into the energy mix has made upgrading grids ever more complex.

The drive to match variable power supply with variable power demand is also driving ambitious international grid and interconnector projects to help move electricity to where it is needed and prevent curtailment of assets.

It is unclear when the new Breakthrough platform will be available to grid operators and developers. Breakthrough said it is a “multi-year project” currently at “Phase 1.”