• Energy Research
• OA Publications Mandate: Yes close
• 2015 close

The Shockley Queisser (SQ) limits the efficiency of single junction photovoltaic (PV) cells and sets the maximum efficiency for Si PV at about 30%. This is because of two constraints: i. The energy PV generates at each conversion event is set by its bandgap, irrespective of the photon’s energy. Thus, energetic photons lose most of their energy to heat. ii. PV cannot harness photons at lower energy than its bandgap. Therefore, splitting energetic photons, and fusing two photons each below the Si bandgap to generate one higher-energy photon that match the PV, push the potential efficiency above the Shockley Queisser limit. Nonlinear optics (NLO) offers efficient frequency conversion, yet it is inefficient at the intensity and the coherence level of solar and thermal radiation. Here I propose new thermodynamic concepts for frequency conversion of partially incoherent light aiming to overcome the SQ limit for single junction PVs. Specifically, I propose entropy driven up-conversion of low energy photons such as in thermal radiation to emission that matches Si PV cell. This concept is based on coupling "hot phonons" to Near-IR emitters, while the bulk remains at low temperature. As preliminary results we experimentally demonstrate entropy-driven ten-fold up-conversion of 10.6m excitation to 1m at internal efficiency of 27% and total efficiency of 10%. This is more efficient by orders of magnitude from any prior art, and opens the way for efficient up-conversion of thermal radiation. We continue by applying similar thermodynamic ideas for harvesting the otherwise lost thermalization in single junction PVs and present the concept of "optical refrigeration for ultra-efficient PV" with theoretical efficiencies as high as 69%. We support the theory by experimental validation, showing enhancement in photon energy of 107% and orders of magnitude enhancement in the number of accessible photons for high-bandgap PV. This opens the way for disruptive innovation in photovoltaics

Waste heat recovery systems can offer significant energy savings and substantial greenhouse gas emission reductions. The waste heat recovery market is projected to exceed €45,0 billion by 2018, but for this projection to materialise and for the European manufacturing and user industry to benefit from these developments, technological improvements and innovations should take place aimed at improving the energy efficiency of heat recovery equipment and reducing installed costs. The overall aim of the project is to develop and demonstrate technologies and processes for efficient and cost effective heat recovery from industrial facilities in the temperature range 70°C to 1000°C and the optimum integration of these technologies with the existing energy system or for over the fence export of recovered heat and generated electricity if appropriate. To achieve this challenging aim, and ensure wide application of the technologies and approaches developed, the project brings together a very strong consortium comprising of RTD providers, technology providers and more importantly large and SME users who will provide demonstration sites for the technologies. The project will focus on two-phase innovative heat transfer technologies (heat pipes-HP) for the recovery of heat from medium and low temperature sources and the use of this heat for; a) within the same facility or export over the fence; b) for generation of electrical power; or a combination of (a) and (b) depending on the needs. For power generation the project will develop and demonstrate at industrial sites the Trilateral Flash System (TFC) for low temperature waste heat sources, 70°C to 200°C and the Supercritical Carbon Dioxide System (sCO2) for temperatures above 200°C. It is projected that these technologies used alone or in combination with the HP technologies will lead to energy and GHG emission savings well in excess of 15% and attractive economic performance with payback periods of less than 3,0 years.

The project studies the use of a radar based technology to increase revenues and decrease maintenance costs of offshore wind-farms by providing a technology that help wind parks predict and adapt to the wind. Modern wind turbines are adjustable. The angels of rotors and blades can be changed. This is done by a control system optimizing production on a wind park level, or an even greater level. The wind park operator have several objectives to optimize for with the help of wind data. One is to reduce maintenance costs. Sudden wind bursts damage wind turbines, through identifying such wind bursts from a distance the wind park control system can adjust the angles of the blades to deflect the power of the wind. A second is to be able to predict energy output more accurately. This is important as wind park operators often have energy delivery contracts and are penalized if they deliver more or less than predictions. Predictions become more accurate when wind park operators have data on and understanding of the wind resources. A third objective is to harmonize all wind turbines in the park to get the highest possible stable output. This is also based on data on and understanding of the wind resources. There is substantial economic benefits to be gained through improved operation of wind parks. The yearly cost improvements from the system in the European offshore marked alone is estimated to 275 M EURO in 2020 and over 1 000 M Euro in 2030. There is also a potentially much larger positive societal impact. Improvements in the cost-efficiency of wind will help it reach a tipping-point where it is driven forward through commercial motivations rather than government aid. The company have recently completed a major (approx. 1,4 M EUR) government funded research project, and tested the technology together with major commercial companies in wind energy like Statoil (largest Norwegian energy company) and Kongsberg Maritme (large player now entering the wind farm control market.

Improving energy efficiency can deliver a range of benefits to the economy and society. However, energy efficiency programmes are often evaluated only on the basis of the energy savings they deliver, without considering the many other socio-economic and environmental intangible benefits delivered. As a result, the full value of energy efficiency improvements in both national and global economies may be significantly underestimated. The main aim of IN-BEE is to address the theme of energy efficiency and to describe and provide evidence for the many intangible benefits of improving energy efficiency through a multi-disciplinary approach, combining methods, datasets, and techniques from cutting edge research in law and economics, humanities and consumer behavior, regulation and environmental sciences, as well as engineering. The overall outcome of IN-BEE is to consolidate a set of policy recommendations for the EU and public/private institutions in charge of promoting energy efficiency, competitiveness and environmental and social sustainability. IN-BEE will impact on both consumers (residential and companies) and policy makers, by: • Developing a set of indicators to measure intangible benefits of energy efficiency • Developing Key Performance Indicators to assess the impact of energy efficiency strategies • Studying relevant cases and identifying best practices • Bridging policy makers and researchers through a web platform • Involving a vast audience of stakeholders IN-BEE combines a strong scientific base with a concrete and focused approach (based on real-life case studies), aiming to involve primarily regional and local stakeholders and to support them in assessing results of previous plans and initiatives on energy efficiency and, above all, in designing new effective strategies.

HERON aims at facilitating policy makers of multi-level governance in EU, to develop and monitor energy efficiency policies in building and transport sectors, through forward-looking socio-economic research in seven EU and one candidate countries. The objectives are: i. the impact of socio-economic and institutional factors on implementing energy efficiency policies and measures, ii. the development of energy-efficient pathways to the horizon 2030 and beyond taking into account the socio-economic drivers and the updated energy efficiency measures, iii. the contribution to improving energy modeling by incorporating social, educational and cultural factors so as to reflect the end-user behavior, iv. the establishment of communication channels between researchers, decision makers of different governance levels and social and market stakeholders. These objectives will be achieved through: (1) Mapping of energy efficiency policy instruments, available technologies and social, economic, cultural and educational barriers in transport and buildings, (2) Assessment of the evidenced barriers and the main driving factors, in order to define their weight/importance for the implementation of energy efficiency policies, (3) Determination of linkages between the factors and the energy efficiency, (4) Forward-looking scenario analysis, focusing on macro- and micro-economic impacts of energy efficiency policy options, (5) Policy recommendations through multi-criteria evaluation and feedback mechanisms with policy makers and market stakeholders from EU (member states, Covenant of Mayors) and neighboring countries (Business Council of BSEC). HERON will develop an innovative decision support tool to incorporate non-economic and non-market elements, such as social, educational and cultural, into scenario analysis.

Residential energy consumption represents the 28% of all EU consumption and if commercial buildings are also considered this percentage increases to 40% (36% of EU CO2 emissions). In this context, is clear that the reduction of consumption in the residential sector should play an important role in energy efficiency programmes and policies as is stated in the recent Energy Efficiency Directive 2012/27/EU. Most energy efficiency measures implemented in Europe involved technological interventions. In contrast, everyday energy-consuming behaviours are largely habitual and therefore the potential of energy savings at home with actions focused in consumer behaviour is really promising. In this context the provision of feedback to consumers has resulted in really promising results, achieving savings in the range of 5-20%. But some limitations exists. The aim of this project is to fill the gaps and advanced in this context, being an essential preparatory activity for the future large scale demonstration of feedback methodologies. The key aim of this project is to develop an advanced and integral user-centred framework for the implementation of efficient energy feedback programmes in the domestic area. Our approach relies in the complete characterisation of the EU energy consumer, and the design of specific personalised actions tailored to each consumer pattern detected based on the use of natural language and emotional contents. NATCONSUMERS will set the scenario to allow strengthening the dialogue between the EU energy system stakeholders in order to define robustness methodologies exploiting to the maximum the potential of energy feedback approaches, filling the existing gaps not still covered by previous pilots and experiments. NATCONSUMERS consortium brings together representatives of all stakeholders and areas involved in the project. A concise dissemination and awareness programme is proposed to reach the target communities and increase the impact of the project.

The CREATE project aims to tackle the thermal energy storage challenge for the built environment by developing a compact heat storage. This heat battery allows for better use of available renewables in two ways: 1) bridging the gap between supply and demand of renewables and 2) increasing the efficiency in the energy grid by converting electricity peaks into stored heat to be used later, increasing the energy grid flexibility and giving options for tradability and economic benefits. The main aim of CREATE is to develop and demonstrate a heat battery, ie an advanced thermal storage system based on Thermo-Chemical Materials, that enables economically affordable, compact and loss-free storage of heat in existing buildings. The CREATE concept is to develop stabilized storage materials with high storage density, improved stability and low price, and package them in optimized heat exchangers, using optimized storage modules. Full scale demonstration will be done in a real building, with regulatory/normative, economic and market boundaries taken into account. To ensure successful exploitation, the full knowledge, value, and supply chain are mobilized in the present consortium. It will be the game changer in the transformation of our existing building stock towards near-zero energy buildings. WP1 Management,WP2 Cost Analysis and planning for future commercial products cost,WP3 System definition,design and simulation,WP4 Thermal storage materials optimization (key breakthroughs),WP5 Critical storage components and technology development (key breakthroughs),WP6 Thermal storage reactor design, implementation and test,WP7 System integration, experiments and optimization,WP8 Building integration and full scale demonstration,WP9 Dissemination and exploitation of results. CREATE will create viable supply chain by bringing together multiple scientific disciplines and industry. In other words, CREATE envisions a multi-scale, multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder approach.

NewTREND seeks to improve the energy efficiency of the existing European building stock and to improve the current renovation rate by developing a new participatory integrated design methodology targeted to the energy retrofit of buildings and neighbourhoods, establishing energy performance as a key component of refurbishments. The methodology will foster collaboration among stakeholders in the value chain, engaging occupants and building users and supporting all the refurbishment phases through the whole life cycle of the renovation. The methodology will be supported by an online platform to ease collaborative design, which will play the role of exchanging information and facilitating dialogue between the different stakeholders involved in the retrofit process. It will store all the information useful to the design of the retrofit intervention in a cloud based interoperable data exchange server, i.e. the District Information Model server, which has the ability to and export multiple file formats thanks to semantic web technologies. A Data Manager tool will be developed to guide the designers in the data collection phase, which might be a complex task for retrofit projects where information and drawings are scattered or even not available. The NewTREND platform will be a tool for collaborative design allowing evaluation of different design options at both building and district level through dynamic simulations via a Simulation & Design Hub. Design options, including district schemes and shared renewables will be presented to the design team, together with available financing schemes and applicable business models, in a library which will build on lessons from past and ongoing R&D projects. The NewTREND methodology and tools will be validated in three real refurbishment projects in Hungary, Finland and Spain where the involvement of all the stakeholders in the design .process, will be evaluated and specific activities will be dedicated to inhabitants and users

One of the main wind market trends is to increase the size of wind turbines in order to take full advantage of available wind resources and thus improve the COE. However, such increase has led to a number of limitations, both technical and economic, in the installation of towers over 120 m, which result in a bottleneck that paralyses this market trend. Large cranes are used for the installation of all types of towers, which result in significant cost overrun in the installation of towers higher than 120 m and limiting the installation of towers higher than 140 m, thus, paralyzing the development of the sector. In this area, NABRAWIND has developed an effective, reliable and with a competitive cost system that enables assembling any type of wind turbine tower, nacelle included, without any limitation in height and with complete independence from auxiliary cranes, thanks to a new lifting concept system based on hydraulic lifting mechanism which allows the system to operate from the ground. The overall objective of this project is the demonstration to "stakeholders" of the functionality and reliability of the final configuration of the new self-erection system for the construction of wind towers in a real operational environment with the aim to confirm that the design specifications and requirements of the application are fulfilled.

Customers using traditional horizontal axis wind turbines are facing several problems, such as: noise, unaesthetic appearance so they need to be installed in remote locations. As a result, the power is generated very far from where it is meant to be consumed, causing an energy loss of 20% during the transfer (line-losses); they also need strong winds to function and are expensive to install and maintain. Newenergy21 has designed and developed UrbaVento, an innovative vertical axis wind turbine for decentralized energy-production (smart grid applications as well as off-grid), which features carbon-fibre “wings”, as well as a smart control and fault diagnostic software that simplifies maintenance and troubleshooting and tracks performance and savings. The UrbaVento is a big leap forward compared to current wind turbines due to its unique advantages, which are firstly: its compatibility with the urban environment, since it features silent energy production at low wind speeds, starting from less than 3m/s, while it can produce up to 10 MWh of electricity per year when operating between 7 and 10m/s; it is suited for distributed power production because it can be installed anywhere due to its compact size and attractive appearance. Secondly, it offers a higher return on investment since it is cheaper to install, operate and maintain, due to its low number of moving parts, the absence of a gearbox and the location of all serviceable components are at ground level, enabling the turbine to seamlessly reach its envisaged life-cycle; Thirdly, its wings can be used as a reflective screen, making it an attractive medium for advertising. The Phase 1 project will be focused on establishing a complete supply chain, a sound business model and commercialization strategy, a planning of all activities for deploying a large scale pilot with 10 turbines installed in different locations, as well as the elaboration of an industrialization and marketing plan.