INCREASE aims to contribute to a wider uptake of IPV by delivering innovations at module and system level, as well as for the design & operation phase. New encapsulants and coatings will be developed contributing to improved aesthetics, reduced glare, lower environmental footprint, improved behavior during fire, and improved antifoiling and antisoiling behavior. At system level, innovations focus on integrated facade and roof concepts, as well as noise barriers. Practical guidelines will further be delivered for bespoke infrastructure integrated projects, validated with a variety of complementary infrastructure integrated PV projects. Elaborate testing is foreseen at module and system level in line with relevant construction related and electrical standards. Optimal case-specific selection of IPV size and characteristics will be supported by a multi-objective optimisation software that takes into account the shape and use of the building or infrastructure, its surroundings, and its energy flexibility potential and steer the asset operation as well as suggest specific user behaviour to maximise the self-consumption. To increase market acceptance, a strong layer of user feedback and co-creation underpins the overall R&D activities, and contributes to delivering 10 complementary building and infrastructure demonstrations on 9 locations in 6 European countries. Cross-sector interactions, policy exchanges, investor dialogues, and country-specific business case assessments will further direct the exploitation towards large scale market uptake.

Buildings are responsible for over 40% of the energy consumption and CO2 emissions in EU. Accordingly, The CE has stablished ambitious building standard aiming to transform all existing buildings into ZEBs by 2050 to reach a fully decarbonised building stock. SNUG aims to demonstrate on three real buildings with different characteristics, uses and climatology, the application of an innovative methodology to support planners of new buildings or retrofitting works in selecting the most appropriate set of insulation materials, their combination and placement to maximise the energy efficiency and minimize GHG emissions of the building throughout its life cycle to make its ZEB rating more easily achievable, considering specific building characteristics and its environment, at an optimal cost level. This methodology will be supported by: -A Digital Tool Assistant based on AI and virtual simulation which will range several final options of thermal insulation materials and layouts, based on benchmarks predictions related with energy demand (operational and embedded energy), sustainability, safe & security and cost and particular features of buildings. -Innovative sustainable-by-design thermal insulation materials and lightweight prefab solutions ready to the market deployment, based on Circular Economy, Smart and/or Renewable materials, able to improve energy efficiency and sustainability of buildings in comparison with current market solutions at a competitive cost. -Insulation materials database, including technical and LCA information. Innovative thermal insulation solutions will be incorporated including current solutions in the market. This database will be released as an open data outcome. -A Digital Building Logbook, collecting all the information about the buildings throughout their whole life in a digital and interoperable format with BIM and the DTA. This DBL will facilitate decision making and information sharing within the construction sector and stakeholders

Beyond building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), slowly but steadily gaining adoption and settling as a more mature, recognized and reliable technology, the increasing interest of IPV solutions has recently started to expand towards other market segments. A curious gaze at our nearest environment allows identifying endless opportunities in which the implementation of IPV solutions could be addressed, bringing synergies, innovation and added value to important market segments such as infrastructures, transport, agriculture, urban environment, low-power electronic devices, etc. This idyllic approach brings, nevertheless, important challenges in the manufacturing, product development and effective integration of these multifunctional PV devices over final applications due to the fundamentally different specifications coming from each sector, which hinders the offer of a one-fits-all technological approach. In addition, customization and flexibility in design is still constrained by existing manufacturing capacity and sophistication degree, which is, as of today, very much oriented towards more standardized manufacturing processes based on traditional PV equipment and processes. In this context, SEAMLESS-PV is conceived to answer this challenge by addressing (1) the development of advanced flexible automated PV equipment manufacturing based on high efficiency c-Si technologies, (2) the upscale of new manufacturing processes presenting key features (e.g. lightness, enhanced integrability) and cost reductions that enable the seamless integration of PV over final applications and (3) the development of a set of IPV products demonstrating cost-competitiveness and compliance with market requirements and expectations. The project will demonstrate this new manufacturing capacity at pilot level and showcase the opportunity for European IPV manufacturers and end-users to unleash the potential of this sector.

Despite the huge public budget effort (6.000M€/year) for road pavement maintenance, the European road network (5.5M km) is not in an acceptable condition. Current pavement maintenance strategies are mainly based on corrective maintenance which is an inefficient and costly approach, with negative impact on pavement service life and road safety, and also on the environment. In order to be able to implement a maintenance strategy based on preventive operations of much lower cost carried out at the optimal moment (predictive maintenance), it is necessary to have continuous and accurate information of the pavement condition, something that is not possible at present due to the high cost of current inspection services. PAV-DT is a disruptive technology that can be installed in any customer vehicle (e.g. public road administrators and concessionaires or construction companies on performance-based maintenance contracts) in order to convert these vehicles into a very low-cost real-time pavement inspection equipment through its ordinary circulation. Additionally, thanks to our advanced algorithm and a cloud-based platform, customers will be able to access the latest available information on the pavement condition at any moment and receive information on which maintenance actions are really required, and exactly where they should be applied and when is the best moment to deploy a truly cost-effective maintenance strategy. PAV-DT consortium formed by APPLUS (Spain), BECSA (Spain), M&S (Austria), MICRO-SENSOR (Germany) and IMM-UPV (Spain) agreed on creating a Joint Venture for the commercial exploitation of the results as soon as the project is completed through a Product-as-a-service business model. Revenues of more than 38.8M€, with an associated profit of 25.5M€ and the creation of 52 new highly qualified jobs are expected within the first 3 years. Thanks to this investment in PAV-DT, these customers will experience savings of more than 746M€ over that period.