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.

Battery2Life will facilitate the smooth transition of batteries to 2nd life use and boost the innovation of the European Battery Industry by providing enablers to implement open adaptable smart BMSes and improved system designs and proposing methods for the efficient and reliable reconfiguration of used batteries. Battery2Life introduces two new battery system design frameworks serving the upcoming market needs: the first supports the business transition for the initial market by restructuring existing battery design patterns while the second one introduces completely new design principles for 1st and 2nd life of the battery. A completely new BMS design mentality is introduced to the battery industry by delivering an open and interoperable hybrid BMS architecture (with an Embedded and a Cloud section) leading the transition from technology-driven BMS designs, to serve the needs of specific applications and battery technologies, to new data-driven and application-agnostic BMS designs, that can be easily adapted and updated to serve the requirements of different battery technologies and any 2nd life battery stationary storage application. Furthermore, Battery2Life introduces innovative embedded sensing and more accurate SOX estimation algorithms, new SOX indicators appropriate for 2nd life use -i.e. SOS (safety) and SOW (warranty) - and a new EIS implementation approach by integrating it in the BMS, that will enable the detailed safety and reliability monitoring at both cell and module level during 1st and 2nd life usage. The project will specify an open BMS concept, data formats, taking into account and extending the battery passport concept, and interoperable communication via the cloud platform to third parties including the future passport exchange system, to facilitate monitoring and assessment. The project prototypes will be demonstrated within the context of two business cases, i.e. domestic storage application and utility-scale load levelling one.