The Powder2Power project aims to demonstrate at the MW-scale (TRL7) the operation of an innovative, cost effective and more reliable complete fluidized particle-driven Concentrated Solar Technology that can be applied for both power and industrial heat production. The prototype to be developed and tested is based on the modification and the improvement of an experimental loop built in the framework of the previous H2020 project Next-CSP. It will include all the components of a commercial plant, a multi-tube fluidized bed solar receiver (2 MWth), an electricity-driven particle superheater (300 kW), a hot store, a particle-to-working fluid cross-flow fluidized bed heat exchanger (2 MWth), a turbine (hybrid Brayton cycle gas turbine, 1.2 MWe), a cold store and a vertical particle transport system (~100 m). It is planned to organize the experimental campaign at the Themis tower (France) during one year. Adding an electricity-driven particle superheater will enable to validate a PV-CSP concept working at 750°C that is expected to result in electricity cost reduction with respect to the state-of-the-art. At utility-scale, this temperature allows to adopt high efficiency conversion cycles, typically 750°C for supercritical CO2 (sCO2) cycles. The expected increase in conversion efficiency (sun to power) of the P2P solution with respect to molten salt technology is in the range 5 to 9% and the cost reduction is 5.4%. (LCOE). The hybrid CSP-PV concept enables to reach 9% in efficiency increase and the CSP-only concept 5%. The proposed approach includes the sustainability assessment in environmental and socio-economic terms. A special attention will be brought to elaborate in a transparent way all documents necessary to ensure replicability, up-scaling and to assist future planning decisions. Ten participants from 6 EU countries constitute the P2P consortium. Six participants are industrial and service companies, and four are public research institutions and universities.

The design of learning games for learning is a complex task. It involves a large number of challenges for the different stakeholders (e.g. institutions, teachers, technical designers, players, video game experts). Among these challenges, we can note the acculturation to the game, the difficulty to align pedagogical concepts with the game mechanics and diegesis, or the specific needs of communities of practice. Consequently, we observe in the TEL community a strong ad hoc aspect of the design of serious games, especially regarding the game elements used to address specific pedagogical intentions. However, this ad hoc character does not allow to capitalize efficiently on both the serious games created, nor the choices between pedagogical intentions and game elements to implement them. The expertise of the whole community is then difficult to share and to reuse, and it is difficult to efficiently assist the actors in this design stage. The goal of the TALE4GDA project is to bring new assistance to the stakeholders in the design of learning games and to allow the capitalization of these experiences. To do so, we will propose a first formalization of the concept of alignment between a game entity and a pedagogical intention - a pedago-ludic alignment. This will allow us to propose the first topology of shareable alignments: each alignment will be characterized by its relations with the others (e.g. proximity, overlap). We will take a pioneering approach by allowing the annotation of these alignments in a controlled way, exploring even the possibility of exemplifying them with real situations. Thanks to this, we will be able to set up innovative mechanisms for decision support, design and capitalization based on automatic semantic and topological reasoning.

Large scale deployment of renewable energy (RE) is key to comply with the GHG emissions reduction set by the COP21 agreement. Despite cost competitive in many settings, RE diffusion remains limited largely due to its variability. This works as a major barrier to RE’s integration in electricity networks as knowledge of power output and demand forecasting beyond a few days remains poor. To help solve this problem, S2S4E will offer an innovative service to improve RE variability management by developing new research methods exploring the frontiers of weather conditions for future weeks and months. The main output of S2S4E will be a user co-designed Decision Support Tool (DST) that for the first time integrates sub-seasonal to seasonal (S2S) climate predictions with RE production and electricity demand. To support the dissemination of climate services, a pilot of the DST will be developed in two steps. The first will draw on historical case studies pointed as relevant by energy companies - e.g. periods with an unusual climate behaviour affecting the energy market. The second step will improve probabilistic S2S real-time forecasts built up into the DST and assess their performances in real life decision-making in these companies. This process will be co-designed with consortium’s partners which represent different needs and interests in terms of regions, RE sources (wind, solar and hydro) and electricity demand. Besides the partners, S2S4E will engage other users from the energy sector as well as other business areas and research communities to further explore DST application and impact. As a result, DST will enable RE producers and providers, electricity network managers and policy makers to design better informed S2S strategies able to improve RE integration, business profitability, electricity system management, and GHG emissions’ reduction. The long-term objective is to make the European energy sector more resilient to climate variability and extreme events.