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GEV Wind Power is one of Europe's leading wind-turbine maintenance companies with teams working on more than 40 wind farms both on and offshore every year. With a presence throughout Europe and North America, GEV Wind Power is a truly global service provider. We understand that it is important to wind energy maintenance companies to find new ways of delivering core services to reduce the cost of energy provision. To realise this vision, we commit significant financial resources to in-house R&D and are constantly looking at technologies that fit well for Wind Energy. We have now developed a patented habitat solution that retrofits to market available access platforms. This creates the perfect protective working environment for blade maintenance and repairs to be completed. Maintenance productivity is increased and, with the added benefit of 24 hour working, GEV Wind Power are able to eliminate the cost uncertainty of weather downtime and will help wind farm owners reduce maintenance costs, improve Annual Energy Production (AEP) and the competitiveness of wind generated energy. Trials completed onshore with our Ventura Habitat prototype using two different access platforms (Power Climber and Kaeufer) in varying weather conditions and ranging between 30 metres and 100 metres high, with successful deployment demonstrating the flexibility and operability of the Habitat in a real-life environment. The overall objective of this development project is to create a commercially ready Ventura Habitat system, with validated results through field trials. This will enable us to achieve our overall commercial objective to become the leading blade maintenance services provider in Europe and North America. We forecast a total revenue of €20 million and a profit of €5 million 5 years post-commercialisation, with a breakeven on investment after 3.43 years and an ROI of 150%.

TurboSol is an innovative solution to provide heat for industrial processes using solar thermal power in a system in which solar collectors and a turbocharger integrate to provide hot air at 300ºC without the use of any additional energy sources other than the sun. Our system reduces the operational costs of industrial drying process by not requiring electricity or any other fuel, as well as thermal oils or any other heat carrying fluids, since our system uses air as heat carrier. In addition, the emissions of combustion derived pollutants and greenhouse gases are reduced to zero. Industrial drying processes are energy intensive and they are used in multitude of industries. Conventional industrial driers consume great amounts of fossil fuels and electricity and produce vast amounts of greenhouse gases. A TurboSol system of 240 kW power producing 480,000 kWh of hot air at 300ºC, will save more than €60,000 per year compared with an equivalent diesel oil facility, recovering the initial investment in just 4 years. The recovery is even faster compared to an equivalent system using electricity, 3 years. The greenhouse gas emissions saved are 126 tCO2 and 120 tCO2 compared to the previously mentioned equivalent facilities. There are other solar thermal solutions in the market, however all of them require an input of fossil fuels and the use of thermal oils or water vapour as heat-carrier. The identified market for our technological solution is the industrial driers market and the market segments are wastewater treatment plants, chemical industry, food & beverages industry and pharmaceutical industry. Our target users are European industrial facilities located in high solar irradiation zones requiring process heat up to 300ºC for drying operations. Thanks to TURBOSOL project, DEMEDE forecasts a total profit of €4.8M in 5 years and a ROI of 2.69.

The targeted breakthrough of the HELENIC-REF project refers to the establishment of a new sustainable methodology for the water thermolysis at temperatures below 300oC and the immediate corresponding production of energy or fuels. The method is based on our preliminary experimental evidence of water thermolysis at 286oC in the presence of Fe3O4 nanoporous catalytic thick films, with the sustainable maintenance of the catalyst due to a new reduction method based on Lorentz force electrons generated by a magnetic field in the vicinity of the electric current heating the semiconducting catalyst. The method is used for the production of hydrogen and oxygen, as well as of fuels in the presence of CO2 in order to reduce CO2 to CO or even to hydrocarbons, (like Synthetic Natural Gas – SNG) via methanation.

AWESOME network aims to educate eleven young researchers in the wind power operation and maintenance (O&M) field by constructing a sustainable training network gathering the whole innovation value chain. The main EU actors in the field of wind O&M have worked together, under the umbrella of the European Wind Energy Academy (EAWE), in order to design a training program coping with the principal R&D challenges related to wind O&M while tackling the shortage of highly-skilled professionals on this area that has been foreseen by the European Commission, the wind energy industrial sector and the academia. The overall AWESOME research programme tackles the main research challenges in the wind O&M field identified by the European wind academic and industrial community: (1) to develop better O&M planning methodologies of wind farms for maximizing its revenue, (2) to optimise the maintenance of wind turbines by prognosis of component failures and (3) to develop new and better cost-effective strategies for Wind Energy O&M. These main goals have been divided into eleven specific objectives, which will be assigned to the fellows, for them to focus their R&D project, PhD Thesis and professional career. The established training plan answers the challenges identified by the SET Plan Education Roadmap. Personal Development Career Plans will be tuned up for every fellow, being their accomplishment controlled by a Personal Supervisory Team. The training plan includes intra-network activities, as well as network-wide initiatives. The secondments at partner organizations and between beneficiaries are a key attribute of the training programme. Each fellow will be exposed to three different research environments from both, academic and industrial spheres. All the network activities will be developed in accordance with the established in the Ethical Codes and Standards for research careers development, looking therefore for talent, excellence and opportunity equality.

HACE brings to market the first multi-chamber oscillating water column. Unlike other wave energy converter (WEC) technologies that can harvest energy from a limited wave spectrum, our unique technology can generate power from all types of waves. Our low-cost and low-weight device is able provide 10-15x the energy output per ton compared to state-of-the art WECs and its simple maintenance can reduce operating costs by a factor of 2x. These innovations will drive the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of wave energy below 50 Euros / MWh for the first time. Led by its lead inventor and supported by a skilled technical and business team, the HACE team has developed and validated between 2013 and 2017 its first scaled device with an initial funding of €1M and support from key technical partners such as SOGETI High Tech, ENSAM and Ingeliance. This breakthrough innovation has been recognized with the TransTech Award in 2015 and the E5T Energy Transition Prize in 2017. HACE already received commercial interest from several utilities (Akuo Energy, JIRAMA, TOTAL) and will use this phase 1 project to identify at least one full-scale demonstration customer. HACE estimates a demand from utilities of 19 power plants in 2022 (8x66kW, 4x200kW and 4x1MW, 2x5MW, 1x10MW) corresponding to a revenue of 67M Euros and generating 37 direct jobs and 120 indirect (ecosystem) jobs.

Nanocomposites are promising for many sectors, as they can make polymers stronger, less water and gas permeable, tune surface properties, add functionalities such as antimicrobial effects. In spite of intensive research activities, significant efforts are still needed to deploy the full potential of nanotechnology in the industry. The main challenge is still obtaining a proper nanostructuring of the nanoparticles, especially when transferring it to industrial scale, further improvements are clearly needed in terms of processing and control. The OptiNanoPro project will develop different approaches for the introduction of nanotechnology into packaging, automotive and photovoltaic materials production lines. In particular, the project will focus on the development and industrial integration of tailored online dispersion and monitoring systems to ensure a constant quality of delivered materials. In terms of improved functionalities, nanotechnology can provide packaging with improved barrier properties as well as repellent properties resulting in easy-to-empty features that will on the one hand reduce wastes at consumer level and, on the other hand, improve their acceptability by recyclers. Likewise, solar panels can be self-cleaning to increase their effectiveness and extend the period between their maintenance and their lifetime by filtering UV light leading to material weathering. In the automotive sector, lightweight parts can be obtained for greater fuel efficiency. To this end, a group of end-user industries from Europe covering the supply and value chain of the 3 target sectors and using a range of converting processes such as coating and lamination, compounding, injection/co-injection and electrospray nanodeposition, supported by selected RTDs and number of technological SMEs, will work together on integrating new nanotechnologies in existing production lines, while also taking into account nanosafety, environmental, productivity and cost-effectiveness issues.

The Multi-Use in European Seas (MUSES) project will review existing planning and consenting processes against international quality standards for MSP and compliance with EU Directives used to facilitate marine and coastal development in the EU marine area to ensure that they are robust, efficient and facilitate sustainable multi use of marine resources. The project will build knowledge of the appropriate techniques to minimize barriers, impacts and risks, whilst maximising local benefits, reducing gaps in knowledge to deliver efficiencies through integrated planning, consenting processes and other techniques. MUSES Project - 3 main pillars: 1. Regional overviews which take into account EU sea basins (Baltic Sea, North Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea and Eastern Atlantic) will be based on an analytical framework to facilitate adoption of a common approach across the sea basins. The progress in implementation of the concept of Multi-Uses in European Sea Basins will be assessed and key obstacles and drivers identified. 2. A comprehensive set of case studies of real and/or potential multi-use will be conducted and analysed to provide a complete spectrum of advantages in combining different uses of the sea. The case studies will create local stakeholder platforms to identify multi-use potentiality, opportunities and limitations. 3. Development of an Action Plan to address the challenges and opportunities for the development of Multi-Uses of oceans identified in the regional overviews and case studies. Provide recommendations for future action, taking into account national, regional and sea basin dimensions. The project will build on work undertaken in other studies including Mermaid, TROPOS, H2Ocean and SUBMARINER. MUSES project partners have direct links with related forums including The Ocean Energy Forum (OEF) which will assist understanding of many issues that need to be addressed at an EU level and could help facilitate and implement the OEF roadmap.

The main objective of the project is the organization of the international conference 10th Year Anniversary SET Plan - Central European Energy Conference 2017. The 10th Year Anniversary SET Plan conference will be once again conjoined with the 11th annual Central European Energy Conference (CEEC 2017) and organised in Bratislava, Slovakia. The conference has an ambition to create a prestige international platform offering a floor for open discussion about the most important issues regarding current EU energy policy and research and innovation policy between relevant stakeholders. The conference will examine achievements in the implementation of the Energy Union with a special focus on the Low Mobility Package, State of Play of the negotiations of the 2016 Winter Packages, and the outcome of the 2017 Tour of Europe. In particular, the research and innovation achievements in Europe in the past 10 years that have supported the development of clean, sustainable, efficient and affordable energy technologies for low carbon energy systems in Europe. The conference will pay special attention to evaluation of the role of Central European member states, including their contribution to the implementation of the goals of the Energy Union and the Integrated SET-Plan. The conference will bring together researchers and policymakers from various member states, in particular, from the region of Central Europe, as well as a range of stakeholders from international organizations, research organisations, business, municipalities and civil society to encourage open debate around key energy issues. The program of the conference will consist of ten main panels, five parallel workshops held in a form of dinner sessions, poster session, and will also include side events.

This project will develop low cost and scalable solution–based coating techniques to yield electrically tunable films with macroscopic crystalline domains of both organic–inorganic perovskite and organic semiconductors. These layers will be used to prepare solution processed hybrid perovskite-based photovoltaic (PV) devices surpassing 20 % solar-to-electricity power conversion efficiency, to provide a low cost and renewable energy supply. The researcher will carry out the processing and characterization of the materials at Professor Zhenan Bao's laboratory at Stanford University. Professor Bao is a world leader in using solution deposition techniques to tune the physical and electronic properties of solution-processed semiconductors for use in FETs, and is well suited to extend this approach to perovskite PV. The skills and knowledge obtained at Stanford University will be brought back to Professor Henry Snaith's laboratory at Oxford University and to Oxford Photovoltaics ltd to prepare low cost, scalable perovskite PV with enhanced macroscopic crystal properties and performance. Professor Snaith is recognized as one of the pioneers in perovskite based PV, and is thus excellently placed to guide the researcher in the development of PV with superior performance for eventual employment as large-scale energy supply. This project will form a unique union of two world leading research groups with complementary expertise. There is great potential for the transfer of skills, generation of intellectual property, and industrial involvement within the EU via the ISIS program at Oxford University, and the company Oxford Photovoltaics of which Professor Snaith is the CTO.

The height of conventional wind turbines is limited by the enormous stresses on the structure. The idea of the Airborne Wind Energy (AWE) is to replace the most efficient part of a conventional wind turbine, the tip of the turbine blade, with a fast flying high efficiency kite, and to replace the rest of the structure by a tether which anchors the kite to the ground. Power is generated either by periodically pulling a ground based generator via a winch, or by small wind turbines mounted on the kite that exploit its fast cross wind motion. While the concept is highly promising, major academic and industrial research is still needed to achieve the performance required for industrial deployment. This can best be done by innovative junior researchers in a closely cooperating consortium of academic and industrial partners. The ITN AWESCO combines six interdisciplinary academic and four industrial network partners with seven associated partners, all selected on the basis of excellence and complementarity. All partners work already intensively on AWE systems, several with prototypes, and they are committed to create synergies via the cooperation in AWESCO. The main task is to train fourteen Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) in training-by-research and to create a closely connected new generation of leading European scientists that are ready to push the frontiers of airborne wind energy. AWESCO is the first major cooperation effort of the most important European actors in the field and will help Europe to gain a leading role in a possibly huge emerging renewable energy market, and to meet its ambitious CO2 targets. In addition, the AWESCO early stage researchers will be trained in cutting-edge simulation, design, sensing, and control technologies that are needed in many branches of engineering.