New Features!
We have made several enhancements to the Repository since going Live in April.
The most noticeable new feature is a model comment and rating system. Registered users are encouraged to rate models and provide helpful model feedback to the community.
Other improvements are less visible but just as important. These include an automated backup and recovery system, and tighter integration with popular search engines.
Please contact us if you are interested in volunteering as a curator, have a model to submit, or new features to suggest.
Industry Activities
On July 17, BetterGrids sponsored the IEEE PES General Meeting Poster Session Reception attended by thousands of grid researchers.
Dr. Mohammad Shahidehour, Dr. Ali Vojdani, Dr. Dariush Shirmohammadi, and Terry Nielsen were on hand to help increase awareness of the Repository during the sessions and working group meetings.
The GridBright team also gave a live demonstration to IEEE PES attendees after a tour of the Gavin Center for Electrical Innovation at the Illinois Institute of Technology.
In other news, we participated in kickoff meetings for two of our DOE ENERGISE projects that plan to use the BetterGrids Repository and Project Curation Services. A third project is expected to start soon.
Research & Development
This quarter we started Phase 2 of Repository development. Our primary focus is to integrate the semantic searching capability we completed in the last quarter, with support for five different model formats. Additional formats will follow in Phase 3.
We are also in the process of designing additional value added Repository services and functionality.
Organization Governance
The Technical Committee met on September 7th to review the Phase 2 Functional Requirements and provide feedback on potential enhancement ideas.
The BetterGrids Foundation also received its official IRS tax-exempt status as a 501 C 3 in July.
BetterGrids governance information and meeting minutes are located on the About page.
Quarterly Repository Metrics
As of September 1st, we had 190 distinct grid models with over 385mb of data – a 4x increase from the last quarter. We also grew from 20 users to over 90 accounts. Model downloads have grown 20x to more than 20,400 since late April.
We still expect to see these numbers grow further as the other GRID DATA projects start depositing materials in the coming months.