TES Cluster

TES Cluster

The TES Cluster addresses common scientific and technical challenges about technologies for conventional and renewable power generation, enhancing efficiency, flexibility, reducing emissions, and including advanced energy storage solutions.

Building energy efficient systems through short and long spectrum thermal energy storage

  • Three conceptually different modular high volumetric energy density storage concepts will be developed and tested in real conditions allowing to decouple power delivered (charging & discharging) and energy stored.
  • None of the storages have heat exchangers inside the vessel where energy is stored.
  • Due to the decoupling of power and energy stored, the storage is inherently modular providing cost savings, flexibility in design, size and operation of a storage systems.
  • In total, four storage solutions will be developed and tested at different TRL levels, one thermo-chemical material (TCM) storage, two PCM slurry solutions and one sensible water storage with vacuum insolation (VI).
Project Website

THermal energy storage solUtions to optimally Manage BuildingS and Unlock their grid balancing and flexibility Potential

The ThumbsUp project aims to develop and demonstrate thermal energy storage (TES) at daily (based on PCM) and weekly level (based on TCM sorption technology) solutions to be easily integrate in EU buildings (both connected and not-connected to DHN) to increase their energy efficiency as well as to exploit power-to-heat approaches also to make EU Buildings as grid flexibility actors.

The ambition of ThumbsUp is therefore to deeply demonstrate this technology in three demo sites in different EU climates and energy market contexts, also to assess ThumbsUp replication potential in further two replication sites. Via its demonstration and replication campaign, ThumbsUp promotes the role of TES as key enabling technologies to optimise thermal comfort and energy efficiency in buildings as well as to promote Power-to-heat as facilitator of RES grid integration in a sector coupling approach.

Project Website

Efficient Compact Modular Thermal Energy Storage System

Energy storage is one of the key factors to reach EU aims to be climate-neutral by 2050, with a net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions economy. The decarbonisation and the transition to clean energy sources, together with the improvement of the energy efficiency, will bring to a severe change in the employed energy systems. The potentialities of thermal energy storage (TES) systems, able to provide electricity load shifting by mean of energy conversion and storage, can help in developing flexible energy systems, managing the intrinsically intermittent nature of renewable energy sources. ECHO solutions will be flexible and adaptable to different end-user requests, in terms of charging (and discharging) power, dimension and types of energy sources.

The project’s goal is to develop and demonstrate novel modular, compact, high performances and Plug&Play thermal energy storage (TES) solutions for heating, cooling and domestic hot water (DWH) production, able to provide electricity load shifting with meaningful peak shaving of the thermal and electric load demands.

ECHO project will provide a key tool for thermal energy storage in the context of sector coupling and provision of flexibility of demand. ECHO system will be adapted to the different energetic scenarios. Additionally, its modularity will allow to use the concept in different scales, from small apartments to larger buildings.

The developed systems will be adaptable to different energy sources and user demands. They will be feasible to be charged directly by means of an internal heat pump, exploiting the electricity overproduction from the grid, or directly connecting to renewable energy sources installed in the building.

Project Website

Hybrid Services from Advanced Thermal Energy Storage Systems

Develop and validate four innovative sets of Thermal Energy Storage (TES) concepts, based on PCM and TCM solutions.

The four novel concepts attain different applications:

  • Heating and cooling
  • DHW
  • Provision of hybrid services (related to heat and power) thanks to a smart aggregator and an open-source multi-service platform.

Objectives

  • Design, manufacture and characterize modular and plug-and-play thermal energy storage solutions for daily to monthly storage with different functions (heating, cooling, DHW).
  • Develop and deploy optimised control strategies from TES controller level, aggregation and community-levels for efficient TES operation and energy services provision.
  • Provide full integration of the TES solutions with the building heating/cooling system and energy management for grid-aware demand response.
  • Validate all technical solutions and ICT tools in 4 representative demonstrators able to simulate different building sizes and usages, in 4 different climates.
  • Create an exploitation and capacity building plan for wide scalability and replication of HYSTORE through the engagement of technical and non-technical stakeholders to ensure a long-lasting appeal of the HYSTORE solutions and platforms.