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Overview:
Write code, cut electricity costs!
Welcome to the WateringHole project. Click on the links to the left for
more information about the project, NERC, the OASIS specification and more.
In a nutshell, it's like this:
NERC, the North American Electric Reliability Council, is tasked to ensure
that when you turn on your light switch, electricity flows through it and
lights your lamp. It's somewhat more complex than that, but that's no
matter here.
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NERC defines a specification for a system called
OASIS, the Open Access Same-Time Information System, which is used by
wholesale electricity marketers and transmission service providers as a
marketplace for power transmission contracts. Every transmission
provider within NERC must have an OASIS node available.
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There are several commercially-available OASIS
software packages available. Most of these come at a high cost to the
transmission service provider, which eventually turns into high electricity
costs for the consumer (not that it's the only contributor). Since the
specification is published publicly, this is a prime target for an open
source project.
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While we can't promise that you'll get a discount
on your electric bill for contributing to this project, a free, open source
package would reduce the cost of electricity at the wholesale level, and,
through regulation, these cost reductions should be passed along to the
consumers.
What the project needs:
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Architects. While there's not a lot of work
to be done in this area, as there is a specification published already,
there are a lot of things to hammer out. I'm thinking of JBoss as a
platform to develop on. I don't know much from anything about Java,
J2EE or anything else related to JBoss, but the architecture looks solid, as
does the support community.
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Coders. Can't have code without coders.
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Database people. Can't have a database
without database people. Wait, actually you can. It's just not
as useful.
© Wateringhole Project 2002
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