In order to unlock the full potential of Europe’s offshore resources, network infrastructure is urgently required, linking off-shore wind parks and on-shore grids in different countries. HVDC technology is envisaged but the deployment of meshed HVDC offshore grids is currently hindered by the high cost of converter technology, lack of experience with protection systems and fault clearance components and immature international regulations and financial instruments. PROMOTioN will overcome these barriers by development and demonstration of three key technologies, a regulatory and financial framework and an offshore grid deployment plan for 2020 and beyond. A first key technology is presented by Diode Rectifier offshore converter. This concept is ground breaking as it challenges the need for complex, bulky and expensive converters, reducing significantly investment and maintenance cost and increasing availability. A fully rated compact diode rectifier converter will be connected to an existing wind farm. The second key technology is an HVDC grid protection system which will be developed and demonstrated utilising multi-vendor methods within the full scale Multi-Terminal Test Environment. The multi-vendor approach will allow DC grid protection to become a “plug-and-play” solution. The third technology pathway will first time demonstrate performance of existing HVDC circuit breaker prototypes to provide confidence and demonstrate technology readiness of this crucial network component. The additional pathway will develop the international regulatory and financial framework, essential for funding, deployment and operation of meshed offshore HVDC grids. With 35 partners PROMOTioN is ambitious in its scope and advances crucial HVDC grid technologies from medium to high TRL. Consortium includes all major HVDC and wind turbine manufacturers, TSO’s linked to the North Sea, offshore wind developers, leading academia and consulting companies.

Currently, new concepts are being considered for hadron and jet calorimetry in high energy physics experiments, in order to improve the energy resolution of these detectors by a factor of at least two. This is a prerequisite for future studies at the high luminosity, large hadron collider as well as at future electron and proton colliders. Amongst the few concepts being proposed, scintillating and Čerenkov fibres are considered very promising candidates. The INTELUM project will be a 4 year project funding international, industry-academia exchanges to develop micro-pulling-down crystal growth and other new types of fibre technology. This new fibre production technology has the potential to enable fast, low-cost, manufacture of heavy crystal scintillating fibres. In order to prove the new fibre technology concept, two key technical issues will be addressed during the project: • demonstrate feasibility of producing between 20-200km of fibres with consistent quality and well defined production costs • demonstrate sufficient radiation hardness of the fibres that the degradation of their optical properties is below 10% at 1 MGy level This ambitious project will be undertaken by a truly international consortium of sixteen institutes and companies, many closely linked to the Crystal Clear Collaboration. The project will also lead to important impacts in other domains such as functional medical imaging and homeland security.