InES wins two new EU projects

Exciting developments from InES: In 2024, we've joined two significant European Union-funded projects, INTERSTORES and STRAWBERRIES, working alongside a diverse range of partners. Together, our mission is to propel progress towards a sustainable future in Europe and beyond.

INTERSTORES
As a proud partner in the INTERSTORES Project, we are witnessing a pivotal moment in an innovative approach to large-scale thermal energy storage. InES hosted the kick-off meeting in Ingolstadt on 23rd -24th January 2024, marking the start of an extraordinary journey.
INTERSTORES aims to achieve successful market acceptance, technological attractiveness and competitiveness of seasonal thermal energy storage (sTES) by improving performance, cost efficiency and increased reliability. By combining engineering, (hydro-)geological, environmental and applied disciplines as well as expertise from different sectors, 14 partners from 9 countries will ensure high usability through technology transfer activities. 
To this end, INTERSTORES will support the realisation of two different sTES variants on a large scale. In Ingolstadt (DE), former extinguishing water basins of a refinery site are being converted into sTES and integrated into a newly developed industrial area. In addition to innovative aspects for the intelligent control of operations, aspects of the circular economy and reutilisation of existing infrastructure are also being considered. In Helsinki (FN), caverns will be connected to form a large-scale sTES, resulting in a storage capacity of over 90 GWh, making it the world's largest thermal cavern storage facility.
InES will oversee the integration of the renovated sTES into the energy system in Ingolstadt (DE) and carry out the necessary scientific analyses in the project. Technical and economic issues will be analysed by means of measurements and simulations. In order to ensure the transferability of the project results, guidelines (e.g. manual) for optimised seasonal storage integration and operation under various technical and economic boundary conditions, including benchmark scenarios, will be created.
The INTERSTORES project will run for 48 months and is funded under the Horizon Europe programme. For updates, please visit https://interstores.eu. 
Further information on the project such as project consortium, project start etc. can be found in the project profile.
 

STRAWBERRIES
Against the background of land competition, double-sided (bifacial) Agri-Photovoltaic systems have been developed to couple electricity generation with agriculture and to reduce land consumption (cf. Agri-PV systems). A solar thermal (ST) implementation of this bifacial system concept does not exist yet. The main objective of the STRAWBERRIES project is to demonstrate that bifacial insulating glass collectors designed to provide heat are a solution to the problem of limited land availability for solar thermal systems by enabling efficient combined land use for agriculture and for solar heating. This will be achieved through several research and development tasks within the project. The scientific objective is to determine the extent to which bifacial insulating glass collectors can be used to solve the problem of limited land availability for large-scale solar thermal systems. The focus is on Agri-ST applications, as these promise significant synergies for landowners/farmers, producers, installers, operators and municipalities. The core technological objective is to adapt the collector design to enable bifacial operation and to plan, install and analyse an Agri-ST demonstration system together with a citizen's energy cooperative. The project partners shall determine the implementation potential and increase the market maturity of this novel system. This significantly adds an innovative system to the currently available technological portfolio and creates synergies with the cross-cutting themes of agriculture and citizen participation. In this way, the project offers a novel solution to the problem of land competition in solar heat provision and contributes to innovation-based growth of the European economy through international cooperation. 
The project includes technical and non-technical tasks. Firstly, all requirements for the bifacial ST system are determined and a concept for such a system is developed in the context of Agri-ST solutions. The insulating glass flat-plate collectors will be further developed accordingly to enable efficient and reliable bifacial operation, taking into account special design requirements for Agri-ST. In addition, a thermochromic coating is being optimised for bifacial operation. The collectors produced will be used in the demonstration plant, which will be planned, designed, installed, commissioned and analysed during the course of the project. A technical, economic and agricultural evaluation of the system will be carried out. In addition, there will be an exchange of knowledge with other CET partnership projects and national/international experts.
Further information on the project such as project consortium, project start etc. can be found in the project profile.