RELATED PROJECTS

The penetration of renewables is an option with no negative effects on the decarbonisation of the energy system. Despite their benefits for the energy system, the grid integration of variable RES presents major challenges to match their non-predetermined production to electricity demand. To solve this, several solutions need to be deployed and implemented, one of which is demand response, which in turn depends on the role of consumers in terms of their engagement with the energy system. Demand-side flexibility of residential buildings is the main source of currently untapped flexibility in the market and promises significant flexibility potential, especially when taking into account the electrification of the heating and transport megatrends. Energy communities are a promising organisational mechanism to engage citizens – who directly control residential demand – in the energy transition, but currently lack the tools to take advantage of available opportunities and create financially viable operations based on delivering the services citizens want. ACCEPT aims to fill this gap by delivering a digital tool that energy communities can use to: i) offer innovative and desired digital services, complementing their existing non-digital services to their members and customers, and ii) gain access to revenue streams that can financially support their operations and ensure the longevity and well-functioning of the community itself. To achieve this, the ACCEPT consortium is framing citizen engagement and business modelling activities in the same way as technical development activities. Their interconnected implementation will be the critical success factor for the delivery of the ACCEPT solution as a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that has already passed preliminary market testing and financial viability checks. ACCEPT results will be demonstrated and validated in four pilots in the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and Greece, directly involving more than 750 residences and 3000 citizens.

The CERVERA NETWORK “ALMAGRID: Integral development of advanced Energy Storage technologies for grid applications” arises with the general objective of contributing to the achievement of the challenges posed by technological and market developments, related to electrical storage technologies that allow ensuring the required level of flexibility for the distribution and transmission of electricity. Through a Strategic Collaboration Plan, the ALMAGRID NETWORK aims to enable the 4 Centres that comprise it (CIDETEC Energy Storage, Tekniker, Circe, ITE) to evolve from an initial situation of individual excellence, with partial scopes in the business network to a final situation of reinforced excellence and coordinated efforts that maximise the impact of the results generated and position the NETWORK as a benchmark in the sector.

While community energy is about to play a very important role for the future energy transition, bioenergy has a very slow development in decentralised energy production. BECoop’s ambition is to foster a wide deployment of bioenergy technologies in the heating sector (across Europe by providing all necessary conditions and support tools to unlock the underlying market potential of EU bioenergy. By using BECoop’s support services and tools, communities and energy authorities will be able to (i) mobilise citizens around new or existing community bioenergy initiatives, (ii) boost local demand for bioenergy by improving its image and social acceptance, and (iii) increase the viability of their efforts by identifying appropriate technical, commercial and financial solutions, as well as by pooling expertise and partnerships from the wider EU bioenergy ecosystem. To showcase and build confidence in our approach, we piloted a complementary set of 4 cases across Europe, targeting existing energy communities looking to include bioenergy heating projects, and local/national authorities aiming to initiate new community bioenergy structures in ort of their clean energy transition goals. BECoop goes beyond local challenges as we replicate our concept to more EU cases, thus improving the robustness and attractiveness of EU bioenergy investments. BECoop will also create links between the international bioenergy community, increase its audience and foster new partnerships. Relevant policy and regulatory structures will be supported by empirical evidence indicating ways to transfer the community energy approach to bioenergy and heating. Finally, the project is supported by a multidisciplinary consortium covering all relevant stakeholders and knowledge requirements. It also includes key stakeholders who are considered natural recipients of its results (existing energy communities, RESCoop Federations and local/national authorities).

BEYOND presents a benchmark Big Data management platform, in addition to which an advanced AI (Artificial Intelligence) analytics toolkit will be offered that will enable the delivery of data and intelligence derived from a combination of real-life building data and relevant data from external sources (batch and real-time). The analytics toolkit will enable the execution of a large amount of descriptive-predictive-prescriptive analytics based on pre-trained algorithms focusing on personal analytics, industrial analytics (energy performance, predictive maintenance, forecasting and flexibility analysis), together with edge analytics towards real-time intelligent automated control of building assets. The BEYOND Big data platform and artificial intelligence analytics toolkit will be associated with novel data sharing (intelligence) mechanisms that enable the integration of value chain stakeholders, allowing the latter to gain the opportunity to acquire building data and advanced analytics and create their own applications and solutions, to (i) deliver innovative energy services to the building sector, while (ii) at the same time improving their business operations and augmenting their business processes and operations. BEYOND will leverage primary or secondary data related to the building domain from various sources, integrated into the BEYOND Platform to enable data exchange in an interoperable and standards-based manner. BEYOND will be validated in 4 large-scale demonstrators involving (i) data collection from various building typologies, data sources, building systems and devices, and (ii) data exchange (intelligence) with various market actors.

The overall objective of the BRANCHES project is to foster knowledge transfer and innovation in agriculture, forestry and rural areas, improving the viability and competitiveness of biomass supply chains and promoting innovative technologies, rural bioeconomy solutions and sustainable agriculture and forest management.

This will be achieved by applying a participatory and multi-actor approach involving relevant stakeholders in the various selected value chains, combined with a strong dissemination, exploitation and communication strategy to share BRANCHES project activities and results. This will ultimately lead to increased energy efficiency within biomass supply chains, and improve energy self-sufficiency of farms, while minimising energy-related costs.

Research on building a strong, self-sufficient, circular and sustainable bioeconomy has accelerated over the last ten years and a wealth of knowledge has been generated. However, due to the multiple sectors and complex value chains involved, a significant part of this valuable information risks remaining untapped, due to insufficient communication between experts in these developments and practitioners, i.e. the potential end-users of this knowledge, such as farmers, foresters and entrepreneurs. Practitioners are expected to provide raw materials and support the strengthening of a sustainable bioeconomy as an important aspect of rural development in their regions, but require improved information exchange networks such as those developed in the BRANCHES project to facilitate knowledge sharing and uptake.

CORALIS has been designed as a demonstration project for the generation of real experiences on the deployment of Industrial Symbiosis (IS) solutions and overcoming the barriers faced by these initiatives. To adequately address this complex issue, CORALIS will address three factors (technical, managerial and economic) that will establish the basis for the definition of IS readiness, a useful indicator that establishes the viability of the IS initiative in general. In addition to specific developments on each of these factors, CORALIS will provide a harmonised framework for monitoring results and assessing their impact from a life-cycle perspective. This impact assessment methodology will be implemented in a virtual assessment platform that will support the operation of the industrial parks involved.

The overall CORALIS approach will be demonstrated in a total of three industrial parks, each supported by an IS facilitator, a neutral actor in charge of guiding the IS initiative and exploiting its full potential. Furthermore, three additional industrial parks will follow the project results to replicate them by implementing additional IS initiatives after the end of the project. Further replication is expected through the compilation of project results in the CORALIS Handbook to support IS implementation.

The main objective of the project is to develop and demonstrate to TLR7 an ECO-innovative energy factory management platform based on enhanced dynamic LCA and LCCA analytics towards comprehensive manufacturing sustainability. The focus is on the combination of ICT for data collection and processing, which will enable a simplified data collection process within the production chain, enhancing interoperability and flexibility to maximise the potential for replication, scaling and standardisation within different plant sizes and manufacturing sectors.

The core of the ECOFACT platform as such will be built at the highest level layer (applications and services) in a multi-service approach that will provide an innovative holistic combination of functionalities for process/product design and management in process/product development.

The eCREW project aims to activate and foster the inherent, and so far underutilised, strengths of community-driven collective action initiatives (CAI). Empowering citizens and providing them with the necessary tools to produce, store and consume energy for a) their own benefits, b) the prosperity of the (local) economy and for c) tackling climate change is an important and indispensable step on our way to a stable, secure, energy efficient and climate neutral future energy system.

The eCREW approach will substantially contribute to the uptake of IACs, by proposing, establishing and implementing a new business model, fully in line with the objectives of the Clean Energy for All Europeans package. The cooperation within a CREW will maximise renewable energy consumption and energy efficiency, jointly and individually, and is enabled through an award-winning smartphone application software system developed and field-tested in the H2020 project PEAKapp.

Covering the entire value chain, FlexnConfu is a pioneering “market demonstration” project that will contribute to the valorisation of European scientific and technological competences in Gas Turbines (GT) and Power to Gas, and to the creation of a hydrogen and ammonia free society. As part of the project and to level the load of DC (Combined Cycle) power plants, it is intended to convert electricity into H2 or NH3 as carbon-free fuels through the P2X2P application, to be reused locally in the same power plant to respond to variable demand. This solution will be demonstrated up to Technology Readiness Level 6 (TLR), by implementing an ammonia energy system in a relevant environment (an mGT operating in a smart grid context) and up to TLR 7 by installing a hydrogen system in a real operational environment (at the Ribatejo power plant). To exploit the potential of NH3 combustion in reducing CO2 emissions, combustion tests will be performed on the fully operational gas turbine. The FlexnConfu design will unlock the current situation of combined cycle power plants by improving their flexibility and efficiency. The system ensures a wide replicability potential and a cleaner EU fossil power plant fleet.

Despite the large economic potential for energy savings in the EU, the market for energy service companies (ESCOs) for residential buildings is much less developed than in other demand sectors (e.g. industry or public / services). In addition to common barriers (e.g. low energy prices, lack of information/awareness and lack of adequate financing), there are specific barriers that make large-scale implementation of the ESCO model for residential buildings particularly difficult (e.g. lack of scale or the necessary energy intensity to justify investment within the current EPC model). In this context, the objective is to attract ESCOs and aggregators to enable the deployment of innovative models based on new integrated energy services that combine and adequately remunerate local flexibility to optimise local energy performance, in the form of energy efficiency and demand side management. The consortium has as industrial partners: 2 ESCOs, 2 aggregators, 3 technology and ICT providers and 2 engineering companies; and end-users (1 Cooperative and 1 Hotel); all supported by 3 RTO experts, ensuring market acceptance. The business models will be demonstrated in 4 pilots (Spain, France, Croatia and Greece) with complementary characteristics in terms of building typology (single/multi-family), climate, regulation, energy consumption, energy assets, consumer groups, etc. facilitating the replicability of solutions across Europe. Overall, frESCO aims to achieve direct savings of 464 MWh/year and a reduction of 108 tCO2/year and to generate an investment of €28.3M during replication.

INCIT-EV aims to demonstrate an innovative set of charging infrastructures, technologies and their associated business models, ready to enhance the EV user experience beyond early adopters, thus fostering EV market share in the EU.

The project will seek the emergence of EV users’ unconscious preferences, drawing on the latest neuroscience techniques to adapt technological developments to users’ subjective expectations. 5 demonstration environments in urban, peri-urban and extra-urban conditions will be ready for the deployment of 7 use cases, addressing:

• Optimised smart and bi-directional charging at different levels of aggregation.
• Dynamic wireless charging race in an urban area
• Dynamic wireless charging for long distance (eRoad prototype for TEN-T corridors)
• Charging centre in a park&ride installation
• Superfast charging systems for EU corridors
• Low power DC bi-directional charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, including two-wheelers
• Wireless charging opportunity for taxi queues at airports and hub stations
• These use cases pursue innovations in current charging solutions as well as their seamless integration into existing transport, network, ICT and civil infrastructures.

For this purpose, the INCIT-EV Platform will be developed including a DSS and a set of PPPs addressing the needs of users and e-mobility stakeholders. As a result, INCIT-EV will involve 3,475 private EV drivers as well as 10 local communities, 4 taxi cooperatives, 4 car sharing companies and 4 EV sharing companies. In total, the project will directly mobilise an investment in the use cases of EUR 8.872 million.

The INCIT-EV consortium has 33 partners, including 3 OEMs, 6 charging technology providers and 5 public authorities, 6 RTOs, 2 ICT companies, 2 road infrastructure companies, 4 DSOs, 2 TSOs, 2 SMEs with expertise in user behaviour and e-mobility exploitation, a car sharing services SME and an EV user association. Finally, ENTSO-e or the TInnGo project on gender issues support the project.

InComEss seeks to develop efficient smart materials with energy harvesting and storage capabilities that combine advanced polymer-based composite materials. This is a new single/multi-source concept to harvest electrical energy from mechanical energy and/or environmental sources of waste heat. The project will demonstrate its applicability in key sectors and applications, SHM and vehicle monitoring in automotive, aerospace and construction, presenting the highest market potential.

3 cost-effective and eco-friendly configurations of energy harvesting systems (EHS) will be realised by combining high performance piezoelectric (PE), thermoelectric (TE) and thermoPiezoelectric (TPE) generators and monolithic supercapacitors (SC) to power selected wireless sensor nodes to be deployed in different IoT scenarios for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) in buildings and aircraft and precise location and monitoring of vehicles via GPS and MEMS sensors.

RE4Industry will establish and leverage a comprehensive network of stakeholders and market actors that will commit to adopt, implement or support the adoption of renewable energy in EIIs. The effectiveness of this approach is based on a strong engagement strategy that will be supported by an Advisory Board and thematic panels at national and European level, which will aim to retrieve and share views on technology, industrial processes, sector regulation, markets and societal perceptions. The knowledge of the experts gathered in this network and the experience of the consortium partners will enable the transfer of knowledge in response to market needs and raise awareness in the sector for the introduction of renewable energies.

This material includes detailed knowledge and insight on technologies and future options for the transition from EIIs to decarbonisation: roadmaps, policy guidelines to create an appropriate framework, instruments to support the transition and clear dissemination to ensure that both industries and policy makers embrace the transition to carbon neutrality.

RESPONSE supports the lighthouse cities of Dijon (FR) and Turku (FI) and their partner cities Brussels (BE), Zaragoza (ES), Botosani (RO), Ptolemaida (GR), Gabrovo (BU) and Severodonetsk (UA) to facilitate positive energy blocks and districts. Through RESPONSE, the two LHs will achieve a local RES penetration of 11.2 GWh/y, an energy saving of 3.090 MWh/y and an emission reduction of 9.799 tons CO2eq/y within their districts.

To achieve this objective, RESPONSE demonstrates 10 Integrated Solutions (IS), comprising 86 innovative elements (technologies, tools, methods), which are being monitored with specific impact metrics (KPI). It attracts the interest of various stakeholders by generating innovative business models that enable the scaling up and replication of the solutions forming a validated roadmap for sustainable cities in Europe and beyond.

RINNO aims to deliver a framework solution that will help to dramatically accelerate by three times the rate of deep renovation in energy inefficient buildings across Europe, reaching an ambitious annual renovation rate of 3.5% in the long term (5+ years).

The proposed solution will ultimately comprise an augmented intelligence framework for deep energy renovation in residential buildings by (a) augmenting human intelligence through a ‘1 + 1> 2’ approach on human-machine interaction and pervasive connectivity and (b) introducing cognitive building Capabilities This combination will stimulate occupant engagement and enable optimal and dynamic renovation planning, design, implementation and operational support. It will also facilitate the dynamic energy, environmental and economic assessment of buildings aligned with the BRP concept. Furthermore, RINNO will provide the flexibility of the one-stop-shop for renovation users, actors and stakeholders by bringing together innovations in technology, processes and business models to identify, quantify and fill performance gaps and support the continuous improvement of buildings, while creating a framework to revitalise the EU building and renovation sectors.

Bioenergy is the leading renewable energy source today and is expected to continue to play a key role in the decarbonisation of Europe’s energy and transport sectors, a prerequisite for achieving the EU’s long-term goals, the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. Implementation Action Plan 8, Bioenergy and renewable fuels for sustainable transport (IP8) set detailed targets for the development, demonstration and scale-up of the sector. In order to achieve a step change, six complementary stakeholders involved in bioenergy and renewable fuels joined forces to enable a successful implementation within SET4BIO. The overall objective of SET4BIO is to support the full implementation of IP8, i.e. for both research and innovation pipelines and large-scale projects, acting as a competence centre and complementary resource for the Implementation Working Group (IWG8). Industry, academia, institutes, EU Member States and partner countries, as well as European institutions and functions, play a key role for the successful implementation of IP8. SET4BIO will propose solutions and pathways to overcome the essential barriers identified in IP8 and will involve and coordinate key stakeholders through a participatory approach. The project will identify and promote best practices for development, demonstration and scale-up through a competence-based innovation approach, monitor development, develop a funding roadmap, provide policy recommendations and disseminate results. A wide-reaching network should strive to achieve the same goal and SET4BIO will facilitate coordination. Several beneficiaries are involved in the IWG8 set up by the European Commission. Commitment and understanding of the ambitions of the SET-Plan in industry and Member States/partner countries will be crucial for a successful implementation. SET4BIO will take an active role in supporting the IWG8 and will be a catalyst to facilitate the implementation of the actions set out in the IP8.

SPIRE-SAIS aims to develop a blueprint for a European agenda and strategy for new skills in energy intensive industries (EII), which can be used to meet new competence needs for cross-sectoral industrial symbiosis (IS) and energy efficiency on a continuous basis in the short term.

Economic, digital and technological developments, as well as increasing energy efficiency and environmental demands, present European (and global) industry with many challenges, not least the continuous updating of the skills, knowledge and skills profile of the workforce. In the context of multifaceted, cumulative and constantly changing economic challenges and digital development, human resources policy can only be successful if it integrates all relevant actors and stakeholders. A Blueprint strategy for human capital development through a Transversal Skills Alliance in Energy Intensive Industries (EII) will be developed within a (social) innovation process involving a wide range of key stakeholders from the eight sectors of the SPIRE public-private partnership: Steel, chemicals, minerals, non-ferrous metals, water, engineering, ceramics and cement. The alliance of sectoral associations or related technology platforms, training providers and research partners is characterised by a huge competence based on a long list of energy efficiency, industrial symbiosis (IS) and related Vocational Education and Training (VET) projects. This project will offer a consolidated approach to address the general skills demands and challenges of the industry sectors, with a particular focus on the people and skills needed for industrial symbiosis and energy efficiency. It will develop concrete and practical strategies and programmes (modules and tools) in anticipation of skills demands.

The streamSAVE project aims to address the existing gap for mobilising additional efforts to reverse the trend of estimated primary and final energy consumption (5.3% and 3.3% respectively) by assisting public bodies in the harmonisation of energy and savings calculations under Article 3 and Article 7 of the ELD. More specifically, StreamSAVE will develop capacity by creating an open dialogue that will focus on streamlining calculation methodologies for estimating bottom-up savings and assessing the cost-effectiveness of technical energy saving actions. The project will focus on actions with high energy saving potential and considered as a priority issue by national public authorities.

To meet this objective, it is crucial to involve public authorities, energy agencies and their representatives from the beginning so that good communication can be built and knowledge transfer between partners and energy agencies can be adapted to the needs and incorporated into practice. In that sense, StreamSAVE will support public authorities and key stakeholders in 10 Member States represented in its consortium (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Greece, Lithuania, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain), and will show potential for replication in at least 3 countries that are not part of the consortium (Romania, Slovakia, Finland).

The transition to the smart grid era is associated with the creation of a meshed network of data contributors that requires the transformation from the traditional top-down business model, where power system optimisation relied on centralised decisions based on silos of data held by stakeholders, to a more horizontal one where optimisation decisions are based on interconnected data assets and collective intelligence. Consequently, the need for “end-to-end” coordination between stakeholders in the electricity sector, not only in terms of business but also in information sharing, is becoming a necessity to enable the improvement of stability and resilience of electricity grids, while meeting the individual business process optimisation objectives of all stakeholders involved in the value chain. SYNERGY introduces a novel big data reference architecture and platform that leverages electricity domain-related primary or secondary data from various sources to help electricity stakeholders simultaneously improve their data reach, enhance their internal intelligence in electricity-related optimisation functions, while engaging in novel data exchange/sharing models (intelligence), in order to shift individual decision making to a collective intelligence level. To this end, SYNERGY will develop a big energy big data platform and an artificial intelligence analytics marketplace, accompanied by big data applications for the entire electricity value chain participants (fully integrated in the SYNERGY Big Data-driven EaaS Framework). SYNERGY will be validated in 5 large-scale demonstrators, involving diverse stakeholders and data sources, heterogeneous energy assets, varying voltage levels and grid conditions, and spanning different climatic, demographic and cultural characteristics.

DC grids are becoming increasingly attractive due to the proliferation of renewable energy sources along with the increase in DC loads linked to the use of electronics, LED lighting and technologies such as electric vehicles and energy storage.

In this sense, DC grids allow for greater energy efficiency, less complex power quality control and seamless integration of renewable energy and energy storage, thus increasing the sustainability of the power distribution system. However, the lack of DC microgrids prevents them from evolving from a promising solution for future smart grids to a commercially available technology.

Today, for DC-based grids to become a commercially available option within future smart grids in hybrid systems, their potential as well as the network topologies need to be demonstrated. For this purpose, a modular DC-based Network Topology concept consisting of an MVDC line connecting the main grid to the hybrid grid is proposed.

The network topology proposed by TIGON includes some innovations, such as the use of a solid state transformer (STT), which forms the link between the hybrid network and the main AC network. In this respect, TIGON will integrate novel high-efficiency DC/DC converter topologies thanks to the latest developments in SiC power semiconductor technology. The protection schemes will be complemented by a WAMPAC (Wide Area of Monitoring, Protection and Control) system, which will allow the monitoring of AC/DC connection points.

The topology is accompanied by a cybersecurity defence system, as well as the generation of an intelligent energy management system (EMS) capable of centralised control of the microgrids under analysis.

Based on the results obtained, a Decision Support System (DSS) will be developed to provide guidelines to facilitate the planning of grid expansions or the development of new hybrid grids across the EU.