NFE Debrief - 26/10/2026 (OSEAS, Open Metering)

Attendees: Hillary Arinda, Aaron Tushabe, Dansturn Kimbowa (dropped out partway: network, tired after travel). Source: Tactiq transcript (kept privately).

Decisions

1. NFE wants a paid role in the Open Metering (OMS) work, either as part of the team that builds it or as an independent reviewer. Either way it should be compensated.
2. Hillary reads the OMS proposal tomorrow and prepares feedback; Hillary and Aaron then meet after Aaron's 20:00–21:30 EAT call (≈ midnight IST) to draft NFE's feedback. The deadline is around Tuesday.
3. The October billing cycle runs on MGM. Aaron's payment round-trip test went through this morning, so invoices can go out from MGM. Customers have not been told yet.
4. Solar/OpenEMS: Aaron reviews issue #95, then implementation starts, aiming for this week so the site benefits fully from next month.
5. Hillary sets up the NFE Nextcloud skill (Nextcloud token) instead of the Gmail proxy.

Discussion

OSEAS, Kigali (Dansturn)

• AMDA said mini-grid developers want an independent metering specialist, someone who understands smart metering, to give them a second opinion on whether the consortium's work (EnAccess, A2EI) is sound. They see NFE as a candidate.

Open Metering background (Aaron)

• Who and why: a consortium (A2EI, EnAccess and others), funded through the Global Energy Alliance (GEAPP), is tasked first with keeping SteamaCo and SparkMeter customers running if those vendors shut their hosting, and then with making sure developers aren't stranded again.
• Nairobi: Aaron attended as a mini-grid developer and platform-software expert, and proposed a broader stakeholder group to steward the roadmap after the first MVP; the group agreed the current consortium delivers the MVP first.
• Funding: funding has been committed for this phase.
• AMDA's angle: developers would value an independent, non-member reviewer of the consortium's work. Funders also asked about NFE's project pipeline, which is part of why AMDA membership came up.
• Next step: check with Vivian (who invited NFE) what role he sees for NFE: part of the build team, or independent review.

The OMS proposal (Aaron's walkthrough)

• Scope: mostly middleware. Prepaid STS tokens, working offline and online, and a local-server option so tokens still load without internet. NFE sees room to strengthen the technical design; feedback to follow.
• Architecture: a new open-source Open Core and unified API (blue in the diagram), with the existing SteamaCo (Nimbus) and SparkMeter (ThunderCloud 2.0, SparkNet) head-ends kept running behind it (orange).
• Hillary's view:
• Wrapping the two legacy systems behind an API is probably easier than rewriting them into the core.
• The hard part is security keys, not protocols. DLMS/COSEM names its data objects (OBIS codes), unlike Modbus register maps, but operators still need the meter keys. The funders have got SparkMeter and SteamaCo to release keys on request.
• Long-term, everything should dissolve into the Open Core. Running three systems side by side is costly.
• NFE's angle: the Open Core can be run by developers themselves or offered as a hosted (SaaS) service. NFE could be that provider.

MGM and solar

• MGM: Aaron's payment round-trip test today went through. MGM is ready to invoice, and the October cycle runs on it. Aaron is drafting a new milestone plan: migrate and start using it, then add to it. Hillary has nothing outstanding to review.
• Customer app: unclear whether it reads data through MGM or directly from OpenEMS (possibly a Vercel function). Needs checking.
• Solar: Hillary has shared issue #95 and the plan (WhatsApp, Element, Library). The aim is to implement this week.

Tools

• Aaron recommends the NFE Nextcloud skill over the Gmail proxy, because it covers mail, drive, calendar and contacts. Outgoing email via the API loses formatting, so he pastes emails himself, but the skill is useful for clean-up and replies.

Actions