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The future wind turbines will require flexible and economically affordable PDPs to obtain reliable and validated new concepts for bigger wind turbines or already installed turbines. One of the most critical components that have a high contribution to wind farms OpEx costs are the bearings (selected Case Studies 1 and 3 during INNTERESTING) and gearboxes (selected Case Study 2 during INNTERESTING). Since both components transfer high loads and have high failure rates, they are considered as critical components inside the wind turbine. Although the percentage of the total Capex cost of bearings (2% ) is not as high as other structures (e.g. blades 22% and gearbox 13%) , their role is not insignificant.However, the role of bearings and gears in the OpEx is higher due to the major impact of early. The fatigue requirements that must be assured for the lifetime is a key factor to reduce the negative effect of reparations. New wind energy key concepts and uses which are faster to commercialisation have been prioritised: INNTERESTING project aims to accelerate wind energy technology development and increase lifetime extension of wind turbine components by developing a disruptive methodology to demonstrate reliability of larger wind turbine critical components without the need of building larger test-benches in the future by overcoming size dependent issues during design process and testing. In this matter, INNTERESTING project pursues the development of innovative virtual and hybrid testing methods for prototype validation of pitch bearing and gearboxes components (Selected Study Cases Components). The new methodology will help saving time and money during the product development process (PDP) by integrating virtual testing and hybrid testing: including innovative non-physical and scaled/simplified physical testing. In comparison with current methodologies INNTERESTING will reduce considerable environmental and economic impacts, and improve social acceptance.

RoLA–FLEX is an industry driven project which provides innovative solutions to the existing OLAE challenges associated with performance and lifetime, through: (a) the fabrication and upscaling of organic semiconductors with high charge mobilities (up to 10 cm2/Vs) and high power conversion efficiencies (16% in OPV cell and 12% in OPV module); (b) the development of metal oxides for charge carrier selective contacts and metal nanoinks for highly conductive micropatterns with increased environmental stability; (c) the seamless incorporation of high speed laser digital processing in Roll-2-Roll OPV module fabrication and photolithography based OTFT manufacturing and (d) the demonstration of two TRL5+ OLAE prototypes enabled by the developed materials and innovative processes: 1. A smart energy platform for IoT devices powered by ITO-free and flexible OPVs operating at low indoor light conditions. 2. A new generation of bezel-less and fully bendable smart watches integrating FHD, ultra-bright OLCD/OTFT displays. RoLA-FLEX will advance all the aforementioned technologies to at least TRL5 within its timeframe. RoLA-FLEX will create an opportunity for a yearly increase in revenues of almost €400 M only 6 years after its end, accompanied by hundreds of new jobs. A timely investment in the early days of these new markets can ensure significant market share for the SMEs and Industries involved and greatly boost EU’s competitiveness globally.

STEP4WIND aims at increasing the commercial readiness level of floating offshore wind energy through technological innovations across the supply chain. Floating wind turbines (FOWTs) could be a game changer to further decrease the cost of offshore wind energy and unlock new markets. Wind turbines placed on a floating support and moored to the seabed can harness energy in areas with much higher wind speeds, at a reduced installation cost. It also gives the opportunity to countries with deep water to enter the offshore wind industry. The SET-Plan stresses that Europe needs to move fast in deploying FOWTs. It also highlights the urgency to widen the basic knowledge of early-stage researchers (ESRs) towards the design of FOWTs and match it with industrial needs. This European Industrial Doctorate programme will achieve this by delivering 10 doctoral degrees jointly supervised by the public and private sectors. The ESRs will be supervised by 3 universities with a track-record in wind energy research and 5 companies leading the deployment of floating wind farms and heavily involved in policy-making bodies. A mentoring scheme will be tailored to the needs of each ESR, with the involvement of several female senior staff. Scientifically, STEP4WIND will develop floating-specific tools, methods and infrastructures to tackle the technological and economical challenges of FOWTs, from design to deployment, operation and scaling up. The innovations from each ESR will be systematically integrated in a common multi-disciplinary design and optimisation tool to assess their impact on cost, risk and the environment. STEP4WIND will also deliver guidelines for large farm deployments, with a clear roadmap to commercialisation. The results will be disseminated openly in a series of innovative ways, including an online game and a design competition. STEP4WIND will also take part in large outreach initiatives, such as the TORQUE2020 outreach events organised by the Coordinator in May 2020.

The hydrogen-based Solenco Powerbox allows solar or wind power to be privately stored for hours or months, allowing 24 hour, year-round renewable electric power and heat, independent of the power grid. Powerbox allows every home and business to cheaply store their own generated energy, with over 90% conversion efficiency, electric and heat storage. The Solenco Powerbox is a heavily-patented combination of an electrolyzer and a fuel cell in one unit. It transforms electricity into hydrogen, stores it indefinitely, then converts hydrogen back into electricity and/or heat, at minimal loss. Heat comes out as hot water at a rated temperature of 80°C. Unlike battery storage, the Powerbox stores heat as well as electricity. There is no degradation of conversion capacity over time – its working lifetime is over 30 years. Unlike natural gas storage, there is no need to draw on local underground storage capacity. Unlike hydroelectric power storage, there is no need for local mountains or lakes to be available. Unlike chemical storage, there is no hazardous storage, transport or disposal concern. Our method has zero carbon footprint and works anywhere, allowing homes and businesses to be heated and powered with intermittent solar and/or wind storage and even to feed excess power into local city grids as needed. Solenco will be powerful to commercialize, since it has comparable cost to existing inferior solutions, and has the fastest return on investment (<3 years) of any storage solution on the market. Powerbox is targeted at the EU-28 residential renewable energy market of €33.6B (2016), which continues to grow rapidly. Our founder has created hundreds of energy jobs in Europe. Solenco won the Hansa Green Tour Startup Challenge in 2018 and will earn 530,000 Euros in 2019.

This project is framed under the topic "SSH aspects of the Clean-Energy Transition" and it tries to interpret the "Challengues facing the carbon intensive regions" within a multi-contextual framework: 1) the de-carbonisation policies; 2) the ongoing processes of de-territorialisation; and 3) the territorial dimension of clean energy transition. These contextual elements are presented in the project, providing an interpretation of the main research questions of the topic.: a) The de-carbonisation of coal and carbon intensive regions risks to be a cul de sac of the energy transition process. Along with this process a set of conflicts emerge and move from local to national and European level and vice-versa. One of the main ideas of the project is analysing these conflicts and the negotiation processes related to them, as well as the political cultures and discourses behind these conflicts; b) The challenges facing coal and carbon-intensive regions are studied in the light of the ongoing process at the territorial level. Another main idea of the project is to identifying the factors of de-territorialisation in action in different coal and carbon-intensive regions and to explain their dynamics and interactions; c) The clean energy transition cannot be understood only as a technological change or as an industrial shift, and it is studied as a socio-economic-psychological process affectng the life of local communities. In this respect the project is focused on the study of the coping strategies from a wide array of perspectives: A multidimensional perspective, combining different disciplinary frameworks; a comparative perspective, developing a comprehensive set of case studies; and a multilevel perspective, involving different key players at territorial, regional, national, European and global level. Each of these strategies will be developed in a specific strand of research: Theoretical strand, Analytic strand, and Pro-active strand.

In the next 10 years, European wind power capacity will double. To maximize energy output & turbine efficiency, one of the most promising innovations is high altitude wind power plants. By building taller towers, we can exploit up to 2x stronger winds, lowering the cost of energy. Modvion is a wood construction engineering company founded in 2016. Our mission is to develop & bring to market the next generation of cost-efficient tall towers for wind turbines in engineered wood – nature's carbon fibre. Modvion’s team grew constantly, with highly specialized people joining the team. This led to our first patent and, currently, another pending patent. We bring to market the first ever modular wind turbine tower made from laminated wood (LVL). Using Modvion technology, towers can be built, with a larger diameter base. This increases its strength, thus leading to taller & stronger towers. By using engineered wood such as LVL, we were able to develop a structure with 55% more strength than steel per weight. Modv

Solar energy reaching Earth is ubiquitous and unlimited. However, current solar technologies in the market converting light directly to electricity theoretically can harvest only 33% of this energy. Stacking several solar cells with appropriate optical properties, power conversion efficiency (PCE) can be almost doubled. Albeit, current multiple junction (MJ) solar cells are very expensive and unaffordable for large scale applications. Combination of well-established thin film solar technologies is a promising strategy for fabrication of high-efficiency and cost-effective MJ solar cells. Dual junction solar cells combining Si and wide bandgap thin films are extensively studied. Infrared (IR) part of solar spectrum is not utilized by such dual junction. PCE can be boosted up to 49% by adding IR solar cell. However, there are only few materials with suitable bandgap for IR solar cells, and they contain toxic chemical elements and/or are expensive to synthesize. Evidently, there is an urgent need to explore novel materials for IR solar cells which is the main goal of the current Marie Skłodowska-Curie project. Chalcogenide-perovskites (CP) is an emerging class of materials that has been highly regarded for optoelectronic application. However, little experimental evidence of photovoltaic (PV) properties has been demonstrated. This project aims to unravel the potential of CP materials for IR PV. First bulk material will be synthesized and characterized to filter out CPs with 0.7 eV bandgap. Then, CP thin films will be fabricated and tested to evaluate potential for PV. The researcher dr. Rokas Kondrotas will be returning after a two-year post-doc in China. He will be contracted with Fiziniu ir Technologijos Mokslu Centras (FTMC) and supervised by prof. Arūnas Krotkus. Through the course of the project, applicant will adopt new competence, research and academic skills, and strengthen his position as the leading scientist in the newly emerging PV group.

The majority of databases are unfit for deploying advanced analytical tools by humans and machines, causing forgone opportunities arising from advanced ICT solutions. It adds to the problem that the transition towards low carbon and sustainable energy systems requires the integration of interdisciplinary and complex data. It means that it is not sufficient to only account for physical and technical attributes, but also socio-economic and environmental ones. Otherwise, society is misinformed about the consequences of upcoming fundamental systemic changes, affecting acceptance building and the creation of ownership for the energy transition. Transparent and integrated management of energy data with useful metadata information and quality assurance provides the basis for society to choose, monitor, and implement sustainable transition pathways; and for the industry to be innovative. Therefore, databases need to adhere to the principles of open and FAIR data (findability, accessibility, interoperability, re-usability). However, the concepts and infrastructures for FAIR and open data management are currently not existing in low carbon energy research. The overall objective of EERAdata is to develop, explore, and test a FAIR and open data ecosystem. This new data infrastructure is established through the broad involvement of the energy research community in a series of workshops and is applied in four selected use cases, covering essential aspects of data-driven low carbon energy research. EERAdata also implements an open platform for uniform and seamless access to energy data and establishes a pool of experts and data stewards to facilitate a mental shift in the community towards FAIR and open data practices. A key element is the active linking of EERAdata to national initiatives, the European Open Science Cloud, the Research Data Alliance, and others. In this way, the project builds a critical mass to explore the prospects of large-scale FAIR and open energy data.

Application of Solar Thermal Energy to Processes (ASTEP) will create a new innovative Solar Heating for Industrial Processes (SHIP) concept focused on overcoming the current limitations of these systems. This solution is based on modular and flexible integration of two innovative designs for the solar collector (SunDial) and the Thermal Energy Storage (TES, based on Phase Change Materials, PCM) integrated via a control system which will allow flexible operation to maintain continuous service against the unpredictable nature of the solar source and partially during night operation. ASTEP will demonstrate its capability to cover a substantial part of the heat demand of the process industry at temperatures above 150 ºC and for latitudes where current designs are not able to supply it. Its modularity and compactness will also enable easy installation and repair with reduced space requirements, while most of components can be sourced locally. The ASTEP`s process integration will allow full compatibility with the existing systems of potential end-users of SHIP. These aspects will provide a very competitive solution to substitute fossil fuel consumption. The developed solar concept will be tested at two industrial sites to prove the objective’s target of TRL5. Life Cycle Analysis will be included to validate and demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed technologies. The first Industrial Site of the proposal is the world’s leading steel company, ArcelorMittal, with a heating demand above 220 ºC for a factory located at a latitude of 47.1 N (Iasi, Romania). The second site is the dairy company MANDREKAS, located at a latitude of 37.93 N (Corinth, Greece) with a heating demand for steam at 175 ºC and a cooling demand at 5 ºC. These test locations will validate the ASTEP solution for a substantial part of the potential requirements of industrial heating and cooling demand of the European Union (EU28), which is estimated at approximately 72 TWh per year

Organic photo-detecting devices (OPDs) and solar cells (OSCs) both rely on thin films containing blends of electron donors and acceptors, sandwiched between transmissive and reflective electrodes. This project aims to significantly enhance the performance of such devices, by understanding and manipulating resonant optical cavity effects implemented in this simple device architecture. By tuning the cavity resonance wavelength within the optical gap of both donor and acceptor, weak absorption of intermolecular charge transfer (CT) states is significantly enhanced, opening up opportunities to extend the absorption window to longer wavelengths. Using recently reported new non-fullerene acceptors, we will fabricate and characterize wavelength selective resonant cavity enhanced OPDs with high external quantum efficiencies and short response times, operating at longer wavelengths (>1200 nm) than the current state-of-the-art OPDs. To improve OSC performance, we will tune the cavity resonance wavelength to the optical absorption peak wavelength of either the strongly absorbing donor or acceptor. This results in strong light-matter effects causing a redshift of the absorption onset. This approach will be exploited to overcome the rather large voltage losses and optical absorption losses in state-of-the-art OSC devices.