The 2021 EPBD recast highlights buildings' central role in the energy transition towards an integrated and renewable energy-based EU energy system. Smarter buildings will support the digitalisation and decarbonisation transition to the benefit of building occupants, owners and the energy system. Improving energy performance and reducing energy demands are even more relevant in the context of the REPowerEU Plan to rapidly reduce dependence on Russian fossil fuels and accelerate the green transition. BuildON seeks to develop a highly replicable, generic solution to deliver intelligent building services, facilitate the integration of heterogeneous systems and technologies, and help Build the next generatiON of Smart buildings. The main objective of BuildON is to develop and demonstrate a Smart Transformer Toolbox at TRL8 to plan and achieve improved energy performance applicable to the broadest range of building typologies and smart readiness levels via a comprehensive demonstration campaign involving five representative real-life use cases. This toolbox will offer affordable, adaptative, close-to-market and easy-to-install SRI-aligned services to continuously Monitor, Assess, Predict and Optimise (MAPO services) a building’s performance. A unified representation of the building, exposed through a Universal Building API, will abstract all field-level communication complexity, allowing the energy devices’ homogeneous real-time monitoring and control. Moreover, the generation of (Maturity Level 3 and 4) Digital Twins will allow simulation and control of a building and its systems. User-friendly decision support and user empowerment tools for facility managers and occupants will be part of the toolbox to explore, understand and expand their buildings' smart capabilities. By providing a unified approach to interacting with buildings, the floor is offered to develop a building app store that significantly accelerates the Smart Transformation of existing and new buildings

There is enough waste energy produced in the EU to heat the EU’s entire building stock; however despite of this huge potential, only a restricted number of small scale examples of urban waste heat recovery are present across the EU. The objective of REUSEHEAT is to demonstrate, at TRL8 first of their kind advanced, modular and replicable systems enabling the recovery and reuse of waste heat available at the urban level. REUSEHEAT explicitly builds on previous knowledge and EU funded projects (notably CELSIUS, Stratego and HRE4) and intends to overcome both technical and non technical barriers towards the unlocking of urban waste heat recovery investments across Europe. Four large scale demonstrators will be deployed, monitored and evaluated during the project, showing the technical feasibility and economic viability of waste heat recovery and reuse from data centres (Brunswick), sewage collectors (Nice), cooling system of a hospital (Madrid) and underground station (Berlin). The knowledge generated from the demonstrators and from other examples across the EU will be consolidated into a handbook which will provide future investors with new insight in terms of urban waste heat recovery potential across the EU. Innovative and efficient technologies and solutions, suitable business models and contractual arrangements, estimation of investment risk, bankability and impact of urban waste heat recovery investments, authorization procedures are examples of handbook content. The handbook will be promoted through a powerful dissemination and training strategy in order to encourage a rapid and widespread replication of the demonstrated solutions across the EU.

DC grids attractiveness has been increased in the last years due to the high proliferation of renewable energy sources together with the increase in DC loads (electronics, LED lighting, electric vehicles, energy storage…). The main drivers behind this paradigm shift are related to the improved efficiency, flexibility, security and reliability DC grids may provide, thus increasing the sustainability of the energy distribution system. However, there is a need for demonstration of DC technologies and grid topologies so that these solutions are able to evolve from a promising solution for the future smart grids to a commercially available technological option. Under this context, TIGON aims to achieve a smooth deployment and integration of intelligent DC-based grid architectures within the current energy system while providing ancillary services to the main network. To do so, TIGON proposes a four-level approach aiming at improving 1) Reliability, 2) Resilience 3) Performance, and 4) Cost Efficiency of hybrid grids through the development of an innovative portfolio of power electronic solutions and software systems and tools focused on the efficient monitoring, control and management of DC grids. These solutions will be demonstrated in two main Demo-Sites located in France and Spain, while additional use cases in the residential and urban railway sectors will act as niche markets for analysing and further solidifying the replication of TIGON developments after the project’s end. TIGON has involved for this purpose a multidisciplinary team of 15 partners from 8 different European Member States with a well-balanced consortium integrated by 7 non-profit entities and 7 companies. This partnership provides the required expertise from fields such as power electronics, cybersecurity, standardisation, etc. to design the solutions proposed within TIGON as well as the industrial capabilities required for the manufacturing, integration and validation of the whole TIGON concept.

Worldwide Data centers (DC) are estimated to account for 1 to 2% of electricity usage. Regarding the European context, it is expected that data centres will account for 98.5 TWh/year in 2030. So it is evident that there is an important potential to recover waste heat from the cooling processes of DCs. The THUNDER project aims to overcome existing barriers hampering a wide adoption of DCs waste heat recovery strategies, providing an innovative, efficient and cost attractive Seasonal Thermal storage based on Thermochemical Materials. THUNDER solutions stretch across the value chain (data centre innovative storage providers, heat pump manufacturers and district energy company operators). The THUNDER solutions will be validated in field conditions at the Demosite in Bulgaria where the practice of WHR from DC is not widely diffused thus boosting the market also in those areas. Deepened replicability assessment will be done and pre-feasibility analysis developed in 10 further Demosites across all over Europe. Co-design and training workshops will be organized at the replicability identified sites to promote stakeholders engagement and social awareness thus unlocking barriers and make it real THUNDER replication.