• Energy Research
• OA Publications Mandate: Yes close
• 2017 close

With 37% of the overall consumption of electrical energy, industrial production is one of the most energy-intensive sectors in Europe. A major driver of both, energy consumption and energy costs are machine tools used the processing of materials, esp. in the automotive, mechanical engineering and aerospace segments. These machine tools are not only consuming huge amounts of energy, they also cause frequent power peaks, thus requiring very high connected loads. These peak loads have a negative effect on the European power grid stability, therefore, the provision of such high connected loads is very expensive. As pioneer in the electrification of forming machine tools, EBM has developed Enerstor – an electric energy power storage levelling module. This modular energy storage solution can be directly connected to any kind of machine tool, thus significantly reducing energy consumption of the machine tool and entirely levelling power peaks. This solution directly addresses current user needs of the European industry, including reduced energy costs through lower consumption and connected loads, higher flexibility in production, less emissions, and decreased investment costs. It helps the European industry and especially the segment for machine tools to stay competitive. With over 1,400 companies in Europe, the machine tools industry currently worth 25 bn € is very important for Europe in terms of employment and wealth. Innovative solutions are therefore crucial to further extend the industry’s position in the global market. In the feasibility study, a detailed analysis of the best-fitting market segments within the machine tools market will be conducted, including the involvement of pilot customers for the validation of the business idea, as well as the elaboration of a thorough business plan for commercialisation. The findings of the feasibility study will be integrated into the subsequent SME Phase 2 project to perfectly facilitate the market introduction of Enerstor.

There is enough waste energy produced in the EU to heat the EU’s entire building stock; however despite of this huge potential, only a restricted number of small scale examples of urban waste heat recovery are present across the EU. The objective of REUSEHEAT is to demonstrate, at TRL8 first of their kind advanced, modular and replicable systems enabling the recovery and reuse of waste heat available at the urban level. REUSEHEAT explicitly builds on previous knowledge and EU funded projects (notably CELSIUS, Stratego and HRE4) and intends to overcome both technical and non technical barriers towards the unlocking of urban waste heat recovery investments across Europe. Four large scale demonstrators will be deployed, monitored and evaluated during the project, showing the technical feasibility and economic viability of waste heat recovery and reuse from data centres (Brunswick), sewage collectors (Nice), cooling system of a hospital (Madrid) and underground station (Berlin). The knowledge generated from the demonstrators and from other examples across the EU will be consolidated into a handbook which will provide future investors with new insight in terms of urban waste heat recovery potential across the EU. Innovative and efficient technologies and solutions, suitable business models and contractual arrangements, estimation of investment risk, bankability and impact of urban waste heat recovery investments, authorization procedures are examples of handbook content. The handbook will be promoted through a powerful dissemination and training strategy in order to encourage a rapid and widespread replication of the demonstrated solutions across the EU.

STARCELL proposes the substitution of CRM’s in thin film PV by the development and demonstration of a cost effective solution based on kesterite CZTS (Cu2ZnSn(S,Se)4) materials. Kesterites are only formed by elements abundant in the earth crust with low toxicity offering a secure supply chain and minimizing recycling costs and risks, and are compatible with massive sustainable deployment of electricity production at TeraWatt levels. Optimisation of the kesterite bulk properties together with redesign and optimization of the device interfaces and the cell architecture will be developed for the achievement of a challenging increase in the device efficiency up to 18% at cell level and targeting 16% efficiency at mini-module level, in line with the efficiency targets established at the SET Plan for 2020. These efficiencies will allow initiating the transfer of kesterite based processes to pre-industrial stages. These innovations will give to STARCELL the opportunity to demonstrate CRM free thin film PV devices with manufacturing costs ≤ 0.30 €/Wp, making first detailed studies on the stability and durability of the kesterite devices under accelerated test analysis conditions and developing suitable recycling processes for efficient re-use of material waste. The project will join for the first time the 3 leading research teams that have achieved the highest efficiencies for kesterite in Europe (EMPA, IMRA and IREC) together with the group of the world record holder David Mitzi (Duke University) and NREL (a reference research centre in renewable energies worldwide) in USA, and AIST (the most renewed Japanese research centre in Energy and Environment) in Japan. These groups have during the last years specialised in different aspects of the solar cell optimisation and build the forefront of kesterite research. The synergies of their joined efforts will allow raising the efficiency of kesterite solar cells and mini-modules to values never attained for this technology.

The goal of this project is to help find the rules for a domain-wall engineering that optimizes photovoltaic efficiency of potential future-generation ferroelectric solar cells. The material to be studied is BiFeO3 as the most promising photovoltaic ferroelectric material known. Does the photovoltaic effect in BiFeO3 occur at the domain walls or in the bulk? What does it take a domain-wall to conduct electrons? The project aims at establishing the necessary conditions for electric fields and electrical conductivity at ferroelectric domain walls. Since experimental evidence is inconclusive, state-of-the-art ab initio methods will be applied. Electric fields have a long spatial range, so we will go beyond the standard supercell approach to obtain the spatial gradient of the band structure at the domain wall, needed to obtain charge-carrier distributions and electric fields. The Green's-function method for electronic quantum transport will be used for this purpose because it is suitable for extended, non-periodic systems. We will obtain the electrical conductivity as a function of the domain-wall type, structure, and purity. Conclusions for the role of the domain walls in BiFeO3 will be generalized as far as possible in order to apply them to other ferroelectric semiconductors as well. The applicant will receive training in state-of-the-art electronic-transport calculations by the host. In turn, the applicant will strengthen the host’s activities in the field of modelling optical properties of semiconductors. The project is positioned where fundamental condensed-matter physics meets applied solar-cell research. It is expected to advance the frontier of knowledge in basic research and to lay the ground for further research on ferroelectric photovoltaics. It is a contribution to the efforts of the European Union to develop innovative solutions for a sustainable energy supply that help achieve independence of fossil energy.

The TRIWIND project is the result of a project initiated by Berenguer Ingenieros one year ago, which has resulted in a patented technology (application number: P201631043) for the cost-efficient installation of offshore wind farms. Following the R&D stage already accomplished and the patent application, the ultimate goal we seek in the project is to complete the prototyping stage and testing studies to reach its commercial appetite and value for leading companies of the wind energy sector such as Siemens and MHI Vestas, which account for more than 80% of the wind turbine manufacturers market share only in Europe. This is an innovative foundation solution for offshore wind turbines that directly impacts on (1) production costs reducing on circa 30%; (2) on transportation (self-buoyant) and installation (self-installed) with a combined costs savings of 86.5% and operational average time reduction from 12-20h to 3h and; (3) it also affects on the decommissioning phase by 50% reduction. All these costs savings represent circa 16.7% of the total costs of an offshore wind turbine life-cycle. Other crucial aspects are related to structure’s duration extension and less maintenance requirements, technical and operational easiness in all previous phases along with health and safety improvements. For this phase 1, we will perform a feasibility study including: (1) technical feasibility, 2) operational/financial feasibility and 3) commercial feasibility.

Energy-Intensive Industries (EII) in Europe are characterized by very high energy production costs as well as by an important level of CO2 emissions. Energy production costs account for up to 40% of total production costs in some EII, while EII emissions represent a quarter of total EU CO2 emissions. EII are therefore directly concerned by the EU 2014 Energy/Climate Package, which sets a global objective of 40% reduction of GHG emissions and 27% increase of energy efficiency by 2030. The report on energy prices and costs for some energy-intensive sectors published by the European Commission showed for example that natural gas prices for European ceramic companies increased by around 30% between 2010 and 2012 and they were four times higher than in Russia and more than three times higher than in the USA. Similarly, electricity costs were two times higher in the EU than in the USA and Russia. Such figures clearly confirm that energy is a crucial element for the competitiveness of our industry. Therefore, an integrated approach to process innovation is proposed within ETEKINA project covering design, simulation, operating conditions and process management together with breakthrough technology for waste heat recovery. The overall objective of ETEKINA project is to improve the energy performance of industrial processes. For this to be possible, the valorisation of waste heat by a turnkey modular Heat Pipe Based Heat Exchanger (HPHE) technology adaptable to different industry sectors will be addressed within the project and demonstrated in three industrial processes from the non-ferrous, steel and ceramic sectors in order to demonstrate: (i) the economic feasibility of the solution, and therefore (ii) its market potential.

FloatMast is a floating platform that performs the best wind data measurements for the most promising and advanced Blue Energy activity, Offshore Wind Parks (OWPs). These wind measurements are vital for the cost benefit analysis of OWPs as they are used in the estimation of the annual income. Moreover, the wind measurements are also critical to the definition of the Operation and Maintenance costs as they are used in the design specification of the OWP’s turbines, towers and foundations. The wind measurements collected by FloatMast are according to the highest industry standard (IEC 61400-12-1) and provide the greatest net benefit to the Developers of OWPs. It can perform wind measurements at a 70% lower cost, by combining the best features from the two existing solutions: the meteorological mast and the Lidar remote sensor device on a stable floating platform. Furthermore, it is re-usable and provides the added value of being re-deployed in other locations of interest. It can be used at all stages of the life cycle of the OWP, from the design phase to the development and operational phase and until the decommissioning phase, twenty years later. Moreover, the platform can perform multi-purpose measurements as it can incorporate oceanographic instruments and environmental sensors, providing a fully integrated solution for a complete monitoring of the OWP site. The innovation has been developed by two Greek SMEs, it has been patented and certified, tested in a tank test at a 1:25 scale model, constructed at 1:1 physical scale, launched to the sea and conducted a series of tests with perfect compliance. The design and hydrodynamic behavior of the platform have been proven and the next stage involves enhancements and upgrades. Finally, the platform must undergo a demonstration phase in the operational environment in order to provide the needed verification of its operational capabilities and advance the already 2,3 m Euros investment to the commercialization phase.

In Europe, hydropower is the largest renewable energy resource accounting for 16% of total production, most of which is concentrated in the Alpine region. However, this renewable energy comes at great environmental costs and development of large dams is now considered untenable in many Countries. While studies addressing the ecological implications of hydropower have mostly focused on large facilities, investigations on small hydropower (SHP) are scarcer. Yet, development of SHP is booming globally and in the Alps rising concerns about cumulative effects on riverine systems. This project proposes a multi-disciplinary investigation to better quantify hydrological alterations from SHP and its effects on Alpine stream ecosystems. Combining field-experiments, surveys and innovative modelling of existing flow data-series, the project will: i) quantify the spatio-temporal scales of hydrologic alterations associated with SHP using integrated analytical tools and modelling approaches applied to long-term, spatially distributed data; ii) experimentally mimic water abstractions from SHP using semi-natural flumes to assess the response of aquatic invertebrates and the link between community assembly and ecosystem function applying the Price Equation partition; iii) quantify flow-ecology relationships and the cumulative effects of multiple SHPs using novel functional regression models with streams hydrographs. The results will provide new insights into the short- and long-term effects of SHP on Alpine streams, with practical implication for the sustainable use of water resources. During the project, I will train intensively in methods and software to quantify and model alterations of river flow and habitat and in handling large datasets. I will exchange knowledge with modellers, engineers and freshwater ecologists and foster new collaborations, which will benefit my host organisation and myself. The fellowship will also allow me to return to my homeland after a decade.

According to United Nations estimations, the world population will reach to 9,7 billion by 2050. Food, energy and water are the three critical resources that must be managed if mankind is going to thrive. With these figures, we will need a 70-100% increase of food supply to maintain the current nutrition levels. Greenhouse farming is a solution to the food worldwide demands as it can increase the food production per acre up to 100% compared to open field agriculture. Although the energy consumption by agriculture made up only 2.8 % of final energy consumption in the EU-281, the global leader in greenhouse production of horticultural products, The Netherlands, has the highest energy consumption in Europe (7.2 %), clearly showing the impact of Greenhouse farming on energy sources. On top of that, the world to which we are currently heading also deserves energetic sustainable solutions to satisfy the growing rate of electrification in the extended populated areas. The global primary energy demand could increase by 50% by the middle of the century. Nowadays, buildings account for nearly 40% of the total energy consumption globally but it is estimated that potential energy savings in buildings could reach between 20% and 40% with new solutions. Solar panels enable energy savings; typically installed on the roof, they do not offer versatility for other type of application, such as windows to allow the entrance of the light inside buildings or greenhouses. Our solution, PanePowerSW is the unique transparent (up to 70%) solar panel glass that generates clean energy through PV technology and more importantly allows the light to shine through greenhouses and commercial buildings windows. Completely aligned with the EU 2020 Energy Strategy, PanePowerSW not only contributes to the energy savings in buildings up to 30%, but also in greenhouses, enabling the growing of the crop while reducing energy costs, quantified in 25% of the total operational costs.

Company ESDA has developed HeatSel®, the first viable macro-encapsulation solution functioning with phase change materials (PCM) for latent thermal energy storage in heating and cooling systems. Accounting for 50% of the EU's annual energy consumption, heating and cooling is the sector with the biggest energy-saving potential in Europe, and urgently needs to become more sustainable. In the low temperature range (5 to +100°C), most thermal energy amounts are required and then discarded worldwide. PCM are key materials to save these huge energy and – at the same time – CO2 amounts. They can run through a reproducible phase-change at a substance-specific temperature, during which the thermal energy is either stored in very large amounts or returned at a constant temperature. Since decades, an adequate method is being sought to transfer PCM into a user-friendly form. Both existing micro- and macro-encapsulation solutions for PCM storage have until now revealed industrially, technically and economically inappropriate. Sensible heat storage with large water storage tanks has very low energy density and storage capacity. ESDA is specialist in the technical extrusion of blow-moulded parts and has in the past 5 years acquired expert knowledge in PCM and thermal storage technology. HeatSel® is a PCM-filled capsule for use in aqueous systems as a heat transfer medium. Most unique selling points of the solution are: universal applicability with diverse (even older) heat exchangers; high energy efficiency through the re-use of waste energy (4 times more efficient than water heat storage) and boosting of renewable energy such as solar thermal technology. Primary target market is the high-volume heating and cooling market in residential buildings in Europe, secondary market is industrial process heat/cooling. ESDA foresees a large impact for HeatSel® in combination with solar thermal and heat pump systems, with a cumulated turnover of €33.7M and 56 job creations by 2023.