Road traffic is responsible for 21% of total EU greenhouse gas emissions and is the main cause of air pollution in urban areas. There is an urgent need to decarbonize transport. The EU aims to ban the sale of new vehicles with an internal combustion engine from 2035 onward. The emerging alternative is battery electric vehicles (EVs). The widespread adoption of EVs requires large investments in charging infrastructure. The electricity consumption of charging EVs puts great pressure on the electric grid. To manage the load in the grid and ensure that peak demand can continue to be met, battery storage may be added to fast-charging stations. Increasing the amount of battery buffers furthermore facilitates the integration of electricity from intermittent renewable sources like wind and sun, leading to faster decarbonization on the electricity supply side. Battery buffers, however, come at a cost. The required power conversions result in losses that increase with the rise in power. Furthermore, there are several key components in fast-charging infrastructure that, through inefficiencies or high price levels, have a high impact on the costs of this equipment. This project sets out to create a doctoral network in which academia and leading actors in the e-mobility sphere co-operate to facilitate nine early-stage researchers to study power electronics, battery storage, cooling, and materials technologies. The goal is to reduce the costs of battery-buffered fast-charging stations by 20% through innovations in system architectures, key components, and multifunctional services. This will assist in managing the load of the grid, e.g. through control mechanisms or vehicle to grid services, and provide a cost-effective way for the large-scale electrification of the mobility sector. The project brings together the entire value chain of fast-charging equipment, enabling the early-stage researchers to access to state of the art equipment and lab facilities to perform their research.

This multidisciplinary four year project aims to establish a solid scientific base and stakeholder awareness for mass deployment V2X solutions. DriVe2X will develop new knowledge, tools, models, and technologies to cope with a V2X-based mass EV deployment in future. It will study and consolidate the understanding on the behavioural uncertainties linked to V2X and develop policy tools to support increasingly complex decisions on V2X roll-out in European smart cities. DriVe2X will implement advanced artificial intelligence techniques that efficiently capture the flexible energy potential from smart charging in building parking lots, homes, and charging stations, and match it with the distribution networks’s localized needs in order to research dynamic marketplaces for exchanging and trading V2X flexibility locally. DriVe2X will develop next-generation slow, lower-cost bidirectional charger units (from TRL3 to TRL7), that will be tested under different use cases in five demonstrators. DriVe2X embrace the EV user’s perceptions and expectations as critical success factors in V2X uptake and upscaling to a mass deployment future. Thus, DriVe2X innovates by inquiring and eliciting the social determinants of V2X, explicitly including it in the development of novel V2X technologies, tools and solutions. DriVe2X’s overall objective is to contribute to accelerate the uptake of V2X by i) deepening the state-of-the-art knowledge on this nascent field, ii) developing new V2X technologies and solutions suitable to mass EV deployment and iii) producing policy tools and insights in support of relevant decision makers. DriVe2X will advance state-of-the-art in V2X flexibility markets by establishing novel retailed marketplace, V2X charger technology by making them smarter, more efficient, cheaper and compact, the social side of V2X by providing empirical patterns and V2X upside studies by developing mass-deployment scenarios and roll-out strategies.

ECS4DRES targets the ambitious objective of pursuing flexible, coordinated, and resilient distributed energy systems developing several innovation activities, specifically: - realization of a multi-modal energy hub - exploiting renewable energy sources - realized by means of dedicated high-efficiency power electronics converters - multi-modal energy storage devices - sophisticated energy management algorithms enabling the local balances between energy production, storage, and consumption ECS4DRES will strengthen the long-term reliability, safety, and resilience of DRES by developing advanced monitoring and control technologies including integrated sensors provided with energy harvesting functions, capable of different types of detection for safety purposes, and for monitoring of energy transfers. ECS4DRES will also achieve interoperable and low-latency communication systems, as well as algorithms, AI tools and methods, enabling the widespread interconnection, monitoring and management of a large number of DRES, subsystems, and components to realize optimal energy management between sources, loads, and storages, to improve power quality and to enable resilient system operation. Most of all, ECS4DRES commits to perform a thorough validation of all the above with a set of 5 relevant use cases and demonstrators. By exploiting the project results, ECS4DRES will generate a wide range of scientific, technological, economic, environmental and societal impacts of global scale, fulfilling the needs of e.g., OEMs, DSOs, grid operators, EV charging station aggregators, energy communities, end customers, academia. ECS4DRES will provide interoperable and tailored solutions in the form of electronic control systems, sensor technology and smart systems integration for the deployment and efficient and resilient operation of DRES including integration of hydrogen equipment and components.

As a significant source of greenhouse gasses (GHGs), it is essential that the maritime transport sector focuses on ways to become climate neutral. Partial electrification of power systems has already been adopted as a GHG reduction measure. However, further advances are necessary on such aspects as the provision of high charging powers to minimise costs and improve standardisation. In this context, HYPOBATT will be focused on the development of an interoperable charging solution with a cost-competitive performance. HYPOBATT will deliver a modular, fast, and easy multi-MW recharging system demonstrated in two European ports with fast turnaround times. The project will assess the end-to-end services between both ports, and compatibility with other ports. A modular approach on electrical and mechanical integration will minimize the required connection time, the charging time, land from port side and the number of components and costs. The charging system will be designed to achieve interoperability and compatibility with different electric ships, grid constraints, components, modularity, logistic and handling, monitoring and safety systems, power flow, maintenance, digitalization/automation, cybersecurity, and human element aspects. The standardization of the charging modules, the interfaces, and the communication protocol, will scale up the charger based on and on/offshore sides; flexibility of power levels will be addressed and the impacts on the electrical grid infrastructure and on the battery degradation during fast charging will be minimized. HYPOBATT unites key actors from the European maritime sector to develop and demonstrate the charging system. A key element is to develop business mechanisms to exploit the flexibility of the charging system amongst shipbuilders, integrators, ports and stakeholders. This will enable the wide adoption of the solution, thus increasing Europe’s lead in fast charging systems.

The eBRT2030 project will create a New Generation of advanced full electric, urban and peri-urban European Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) enhanced with novel automation and connectivity functionalities, to support sustainable urban transport by reducing cost/km/passenger, TCO, GHG and pollutant emissions and traffic congestion. The eBRT2030 project is developed through three main lines: 1) The development of technology-focused key innovative solutions for BRT, both at system and subsystem level, at level of vehicle, infrastructure, operation, and IoT connectivity 2) 7 demos of BRT system innovative solutions in real-operation, both city-&operator-led and BRT system-focused, or focused on specific technology innovation at subsystem level that are ready for BRT operations, in Europe and outside Europe (in Latin America and East-Africa), and fully integrated in the whole urban mobility scenario 3) the definition a new European concept of Bus Rapid Transit for year 2030, benefitting of evaluation, multiplication and replication of the real-operation test of innovations, that improve the performance of the whole European urban bus system. All cities in eBRT2030 have BRT lines already in operation or launched within 2023, and strongly committed to innovate with electrification, automation, connectivity technology tailored to the characteristics of European bus operations.