Interoperability depends on cooperation of multiple domains. While for the energy sector technical interoperability is quite well established, interoperability of functions and businesses needs more attention. Even when standards are defined and interoperability models agreed, framework setters, product developers and users need to agree on their deployment and make sure that solutions are compatible with definitions. The Interoperability Network for the Energy Transition project (IntNET) establishes an open, cross-domain community bringing together all stakeholders relevant for the European energy sector to jointly work on developing, testing and deploying interoperable energy services. The community will be formally established to exist beyond project life-time. With a comprehensive, FAIR knowledge platform and a series of attractive events it guides those who deal with the heterogeneous interoperability landscape of energy services. To support ongoing harmonization of energy services, IntNET will institutionalise an assessment methodology and maturity model (IMM). Involving legal and regulatory bodies from the beginning and constant exchange of interoperability initiatives and standardization bodies will build a deep consensus on how European governance and industry can foster interoperability at all levels. Starting from an extraordinary well balanced and connected consortium of researchers, framework setters (e.g., ministry and EU wide associations), standardisation and communication experts, IntNET’s community approach guarantees wide outreach. IntNET will establish a framework for interoperability testing in ongoing projects and harmonize test procedures in a network of closely cooperating, self-sustained testing facilities. Energy service solutions based on the novel IMM and tested according to the IntNET certification process will be awarded with a widely known quality seal for interoperable smart grid and energy products (working title: “IntNET approved").

Critical Real-Time Embedded Systems (CRTES) such as railway, aerospace, automotive and energy generation systems face a disruptive challenge caused by the massive irruption of mixed-criticality systems based on multicore processors. At the same time low-power is an intensifying demand in many market segments, a competitive advantage for CRTES that have to operate with limited energy (e.g., battery powered systems), an enabler for higher availability and a desired feature towards near-zero emission in systems with tens/hundreds of devices. Power is also a key aspect in mixed-criticality systems as another resource (together with time and space) that has to be shared among different applications and has to be strictly controlled not to cause undesired interferences. The main objective of SAFEPOWER is to enable the development of mixed-criticality systems with low power, energy and temperature in combination with safety, real-time and security support by a reference architecture orchestrating different local power-management techniques. SAFEPOWER builds a comprehensive suite of multi-core platform technologies as well as analysis, simulation and verification tools for low-power mixed-criticality systems, including hardware and software reference platforms assisting the implementation, observation and test of such applications. SAFEPOWER will demonstrate the benefits through two industrial use-cases and a cross-domain public demonstrator. The safety concept of SAFEPOWER will be assessed by an external certification authority and consider reference domains and safety standards (e.g. industrial IEC-61508, railway, automotive, aerospace). SAFEPOWE brings significant improvements w.r.t. power, energy, temperature, availability and lifetime of CRTES as well as new types of competitive products operating with limited energy. Impact and exploitation will also be facilitated by the strong collaboration with other related projects in the cluster of mixed-criticality systems.

Renewable energy sources are key enablers to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and to cope with the anthropogenic global warming. The intermittent behaviour of them and their limited storage capabilities present new challenges to power system operators in maintaining power quality and reliability. However, the increased availability of advanced automation and communication technologies has also provided new intelligent solutions to these challenges. Previous work has presented various new methods to operate highly interconnected power grids with corresponding components in a more effective way. As a consequence of these developments the traditional power system is transformed into a cyber-physical system, a Smart Grid. Previous and ongoing research activities have mainly focused on validating certain aspects of Smart Grids, but until now no integrated approach for analysing and evaluating complex configurations in a cyber-physical systems manner is available. The lack of system validation approaches for Smart Grids is especially addressed by ERIGrid. By providing a Pan-European research infrastructure ERIGrid supports the technology development as well as the roll out of Smart Grid solutions and concepts in Europe. It tackles a holistic, cyber-physical systems based approach by integrating 18 European research centres and institutions with outstanding research infrastructures and jointly develops common methods, concepts, and procedures. ERIGrid also integrates and enhances the necessary research services for analysing, validating and testing Smart Grid configurations. System level support and education for industrial and academic researchers in is provided as well to foster future innovation. ERIGrid addresses these challenging aims by providing a single entry point to the provided research infrastructure and offering a broad spectrum of services to researchers active in Smart Grids. This will strengthen the technical leadership of Europe in the energy domain.

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are a core enabling technology for securing economic leadership in embedded systems and ICT, having an enormous social and economic importance, and making decisive contributions to societal challenges. The EU and the US face common challenges to push forward the limits of the science for engineering CPS, creating a favorable environment for strategic and pre-competitive collaboration. The Transatlantic CPS Summit is an ambitious 18-month support action with the goal of facilitating and creating an enduring and sustainable collaboration campaign on CPS research and development between Europe and the US. The support action achieves its overall aim by means of: 1. Identifying and evaluating possible R&D cooperations between Europe and the US; 2. Investigating and promoting implementation of opportunities for cooperation; 3. Preparing a roadmap for R&D cooperation on CPS engineering between the EU and US together with recommendations for action; 4. Presenting final results to interested stakeholders (e.g. public bodies, industry, academic researchers) on both sides of the Atlantic. To achieve the above, the project mobilises an outstanding multidisciplinary consortium of 7 EU partners and 5 US partners and brings together recognized CPS researchers across the EU and the US in a series of CPS Summit Workshops.