Flexibility in Ris for Global Carbon Neutrality: FlexRICAN

Programme(s):
HORIZON.1.3 - Research infrastructures 
HORIZON.1.3.3 - The innovation potential of European Research Infrastructures and activities for Innovation and Training

Topic(s): HORIZON-INFRA-2023-TECH-01-01 - New technologies and solutions for reducing the environmental and climate footprint of RIs

Call for proposal: HORIZON-INFRA-2023-TECH-01

Funding Scheme: HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions

Grant agreement ID: 101131516

Objective:

The FlexRICAN project brings together three landmark ESFRI infrastructures that have, or will have, when in operation different usages of energy: the European Spallation Source ERIC (ESS) in Sweden, the Extreme Light Infrastructure ERIC (ELI), with two running facilities (Czech Republic and Hungary) and the European Magnetic Field Laboratory AISBL (EMFL), with facilities in Grenoble and Nijmegen for DC fields and Dresden and Toulouse for pulsed fields (CNRS, SRU, HZDR). The RI’s and partners involved in FlexRICAN will unite their strength to optimize their ongoing (and/or future) energy projects. They will demonstrate that the RIs, as electro-intensive actors, are at the good scale to develop a global energetic approach delivering services to the European electrical grid through optimized energy flexibility and to local heating networks by developing Waste Heat Recovery projects. Developing renewable energy capacity production and managing these developments in an integrated way thanks to energy oriented modelization integrating RIs user communities and the new stakeholders appears like a promising solution. Through the development of a multi-energy approach integrating academic knowledge and two key actors of the energy sector, Alfa Laval (AL) and Energy Pool (EP), FlexRICAN will propose new technologies and solutions to increase resource use efficiency and reduce environmental impacts of European Research Infrastructures (RIs). The project will focus on assessing and validating the implementation of new solutions and technologies at the three ESFRI infrastructures involved. Prototypes and solutions will be developed and tested to identify solutions at the real scale of the infrastructures. It will contribute to quantify energy services and carbon print gain the RIs can performed throughout their full life cycle in order to increase the long-term sustainability of European Research Infrastructures and to contribute to the resilience of the energetical European system