Open source technology and formal standards will increasingly work hand-in-hand in the 5G and IoT era, and a new example comes from the Linux Foundation’s LF Energy project, which has announced the availability of Grid eXchange Fabric (GXF) as an open standard to be used in smart grid deployments. The project’s biggest challenge remains convincing the rest of the utility industry to come to the table, but open platforms should make this task a lot easier. The foundation for GXF came from Alliander, a Dutch distribution system operator (DSO) that was behind the Open Smart Grid Platform (OSGP). Alliander went on to join LF Energy as a premier member, and contributed the OSGP stack to the project, and now the…