European energy industry is facing three major challenges:a) the increased integration of renewable, fluctuating power resources to achieve the climate goals,b) increased "smartness" especially in the electrical distribution grid to cope with increasing capacity requirements and finallyc) the stakeholder diversification separating grid operation, power provisioning, metering services, auxiliary services and others.These challenges have to be considered jointly when developing components for the upcoming Smartgrid.In the recent past the smart grid has often been a synonym for a smart meter infrastructure but which actually often provides only a smart edge of the grid. In the OpenNode project work will especially focus on inner parts of the distribution grid to address the described three major challenges, namely on the research and development of (1) an open secondary substation node (SSN) which is seen as an essential control component of the future smart distribution grid, (2) a Middleware to couple the SSN with the Utilities systems for grid and utility operation and (3) a modular communication architecture based on standardised communication protocols to grant the flexibility required by the stakeholder diversification and to cope with massively distributed embedded systems in the distribution grid.The proposal will differentiate itself from competing consortia primarily through its dedication to have technology developments driven through close cooperation between European ICT leaders, the European Consulting standards leaders and some of the greatest Utilities in Europe. This will allows the consortium to conduct focused research work to identify the user requirements based on upcoming use cases, to specify an open system approach, to evolve accepted industry standards and to deliver near-operational prototypes which will be evaluated by field trials in two European Countries.