Creep damage detection in pressurised steam line components is a major concern in the power generation industry. Currently, replica metallography is used to inspect these components. This method can only detect surface defects however evidence indicates that creep damage develops first inside the pipe wall and does not appear at the wall surface until the pipe is almost ready to fail. This results in catastrophic component failures which cost the industry more than €500,000 in lost revenue per day out of operation. To combat this, we will commercialise the CreepUT system, which employs a proprietary Ultrasonic (UT) technique that enables the early detection of sub-surface creep damage. We are an industrially driven consortium with significant expertise in field inspection services and NDT product development. We have already tested and validated the capabilities of CreepUT in relevant environment but require about €2.5 million to evolve our system from TRL-6 to TRL-9 and speed-up the delivery of the CreepUT product into the market place. We plan to refine the hardware electronics and make our system more ergonomic to be used by technicians. A major part of the project is focused on validating the performance of the system in an industrial power plant; in this effort, we are supported by PPC, one of Greece’s top energy companies. Activities will target towards certifying the CreepUT product, fine tuning our marketing plan, approaching new customers and setting-up our customer services department. We will penetrate the fossil and nuclear power generation industry in UK, Greece, France, Saudi Arabia, India and China. We calculate total revenues of €14.59million by 2024, operating at a profit of €2.05 million and creating 42 new jobs. The power generation industry will benefit from reduced outage periods; hence the power plants will operate safer and for longer saving the industry about €32 million per year.

The rapid development of the energy domain with smart devices as well as the recent expansion of renewable power sources have raised significant challenges for the energy industries and the research community in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) domain. In order for the high expectations and the expected impact on the energy market’s practices to be met, the industrial community needs new well-educated professionals, even at the early stages of their life career, that continuously keep track of the latest technological advancements, while Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) need to discover efficient ways to disseminate the expertise developed through research projects and activities across Europe.This changing environment and context places new demands in terms of education and sets new requirements for university graduates. JAUNTY (Joint undergAduate coUrses for smart eNergy managemenT sYstems) is the beneficial result of transferring state of the art knowledge gained during the implementation of the innovative Horizon 2020 projects SDN-microSENSE and SPEAR – funded under the H2020 program – directly to undergraduate student’s classes. In this project, members of the SDN-microSENSE and SPEAR consortiums, develop distant courses and remote labs in Smart Energy Management Systems (SEMS) for undergraduate students, in order to address the energy power companies’ demands on emerging ICT technologies. The courses are provided through online platforms while students are exercised on smart grid deployments and management, via a newly developed platform for remote labs. All courses and labs are embedded to the participating HEIs curricula as elective courses and students successfully completed the program will be awarded with a Joint Qualifications Certificate on SEMS.Apart from its main academic content, the rationale behind JAUNTY project is to enable students with fewer opportunities to gain an international study experience without mobility by the so called “ERASMUS from Home”. Under this prism, new challenges are created for the European HEIs to prepare well-aware graduates in terms of their opportunities for further studies and employment on their specific areas of interest.

The HYScale project addresses upscaling of an efficient, durable, sustainable and cost-effective advanced alkaline membrane water electrolysis technology capable of producing economic green hydrogen at significantly higher current densities than SoA electrolyzer. The HYScale technology builds on the results from multiple EU-funded projects. In contrast to SoA electrolyzers, it is entirely critical raw material free without the need for fluorinated membranes and ionomers while meeting a significant fraction of the 2024 KPIs already today at the lab scale. Due to many unique material choices and design features, the HYScale water electrolysis technology distinguishes itself further from the SoA by its potential to be upscaled cost-effective and rapidly. The SME and industry-driven project HYScale aims to upscale its electrolyzer technology with a focus on optimizing materials synthesis and components production, especially membranes, ionomers, electrodes, and porous transport layers. Respecting Europe's circular-economy action plan, a large area stack with an active surface area of 400 cm2 and a nominal power of 100kW will be developed capable of handling a high dynamic range of operational capacities with advanced economic and stable stack components. These efforts will ensure durable and efficient operation at high current densities (2 A cm-2 at Ecell 1.85-2 V/cell) at low temperatures (60 °C) with appropriate hydrogen output pressures (15 bar). The project's final goal is to integrate the stack into a functional electrolyzer system with a CAPEX target of 400 €/kW and its validation in an industrially relevant environment at TRL5. This final step will accelerate technology development, close the gap between research and commercialization, significantly shorten the time to market, and pave the way to a more sustainable Europe.