300 TWh energy – that’s €51 billion – from heat sources is wasted every year in the EU due to the lack of cost-efficient, space-saving, and scalable storage systems. Heat losses equal net heat demand – a dramatic waste of resources and capital. Industrial companies and energy producers waste excess energy because intermediate storage or conversion to electricity is not economic. With KRAFTBLOCK, economic energy storage and conversion becomes affordable for the first time. Our patented storage granule is produced from 85% upcycled blast furnace slag and a self-developed binding agent. With this patented granule, storage-capacity/m³ is increased by a factor of 10 while the storage price per MWh is reduced by a factor of 12. The granule is part of our energy storage system, which are stackable units of 60MWh, enabling heat-to-heat, heat-to-power, power-to-heat, and power-to-power operations in the steel, glass, ceramics, metal, cement, food and paper industry.

COOPERANT is at the forefront of advancing the next generation of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) technologies by tackling typical limitations of conventional CSP facilities, such as operation at high temperatures, dispatchability, cost-effectiveness and sustainability. COOPERANT's innovations are paving the way for the uninterrupted generation of green solar power that is both dispatchable and economically viable, breaking the dependency on solar radiation. Working at high temperatures (~1000ºC) is crucial to increase efficiency and cost-effectiveness; however, harsh operating conditions present significant challenges in terms of material availability, corrosion, system design and performance limitations. In alignment with the SET-Plan for CSP, the proposal incorporates three cutting-edge solutions at technological, digital and transference levels, that synergistically cooperate to address them: -COOPERANT CSP-TES system: a groundbreaking concept showcasing a high-performance volumetric solar receiver with custom-designed cellular morphology coupled with a hybrid packed-bed Thermal Energy Storage (TES) system. Enhanced phase-change materials and solid-state mixtures will be formulated and characterised to serve as high-temperature storage mediums. Heat transfer enhancement and containment techniques will be applied to ensure operation safety and long-lasting durability. -COOPERANT-AI TOOL: including real-time monitoring, reinforced learning-based control, scalability and replicability features. A holistic orchestration by sophisticated artificial intelligence digital tools to assist with feasibility, replicability, and scalability paths towards commercialisation. -COOPERANT-TRANSFER: a knowledge transference programme with a multi-stakeholder approach, engaging closely with the industrial sphere through the Stakeholder Replicability Board (SRB), enlisting key partners focused on dispatchable clean energy, solar fuels generation and industrial applications.

Grid-Scale Energy Storage Technologies are the undeniable elements of sustainable energy systems for several reasons such as stabilizing variable energy generation of solar and wind farms, facilitating sector coupling, optimizing resource utilization, improving energy security and resiliency, etc. However, the widespread deployment of such systems is currently very challenging due to major technological, economic, and policy gaps. These issues could only be addressed through cutting-edge research and innovative developments driven by skilled researchers and specialists with multi-lens visions on all critical aspects. Established around a rigorously tailored plan of action, RESTORATIVE brings together the global leaders of relevant fields and industrial actors across Europe to launch a multidisciplinary platform to address the gaps by several breakthrough solutions and training 17 doctoral fellows in different disciplines. To cover the diverse factors influencing the real-world implementation of novel energy systems, the project's thorough work plan is centered around research and PhD training in "mechanical, chemical, and material engineering for technological innovations", "power engineering, and computer sciences for addressing security, reliability, and operation bottlenecks", and "energy economics, energy policy, and environmental sciences for mitigating regulatory, policy and sustainability barriers". Since state-of-the-art research consistently highlights the superiority of thermo-mechanical solutions among all energy storage classes for grid-scale applications, RESTORATIVE is dedicated to Thermo-Mechanical Grid-Scale Energy Storage Systems. Notably, the project has a comprehensive and meticulously planned program of training and career development for doctoral students, including specialized courses, schools, workshops, academic and industrial secondment, entrepreneurship skill-building, etc.

HERCULES introduces a novel breakthrough approach towards thermal energy storage of surplus renewable energy via a hybrid thermochemical/sensible heat storage with the aid of porous media made of refractory redox metal oxides and electrically powered heating elements. The heating elements use surplus/cheap renewable electricity (e.g. from PVs, wind, or other sources) to charge the metal oxide-based storage block by heating it to the metal oxide reduction temperature (i.e. charging/energy storage step) and subsequently (i.e. upon demand) the fully charged system transfers its energy to a controlled airflow that passes through the porous oxide block which initiated the oxidation of the reduced metal oxide. It is an exothermic process thus a hot air stream is produced during this step which can be used to provide exploitable heat for industrial processes. The proposed research will be conducted by an interdisciplinary consortium constituting leading research centers, universities, innovative SMEs, and large enterprises including ancillary service providers and technology end-users.

ABraytCSPfuture sets forth an innovative, carbon-neutral way for implementing into future air-operated CSP plants the inherently much more efficient air-Brayton gas turbine power generation cycles in order to achieve higher solar-to-electricity efficiencies, vital for competitiveness of CSP and non-reachable by either PVs or molten salts and thermal oils, significantly increasing in parallel the plants’ storage capability. Both these functionalities will be made possible by developing and demonstrating the integrated operation of a first-of-its-kind, compact, dual-bed thermochemical reactor/heat exchanger design, comprised of non-moving, flow-through porous ceramic structures (honeycombs or foams) based on earth-abundant, inexpensive, non-toxic oxide materials, capable of performing simultaneously the following: • transferring heat from a non-pressurized air stream to a pressurized one, while operating simultaneously as a “thermal booster”, raising the temperature of the pressurized stream to levels required for gas turbine air-Brayton cycles. • Increasing significantly the volumetric solar energy storage density of such air-operated CSP plants by rendering their current sensible-only regenerative storage systems to hybrid sensible-thermochemical storage ones, within the same storage volume, Both these functionalities will be materialized by exploiting reversible reduction/oxidation reactions of such oxides in direct contact with air, accompanied by significant endothermic/exothermic heat effects. The first one in particular, will be achieved by performing the reduction of these oxides with solar-heated air streams under atmospheric pressure but their exothermic oxidation with pressurized air streams. The proposed technology is set forth by an interdisciplinary partnership spanning the entire CSP value chain, comprised of leading research centers, universities, innovative SMEs and large enterprises, including ancillary services providers and technology end-users.