Energy storage: the first European network is set up

A €7 million investment to create Europe's first network of research infrastructures on energy storage, a key element in increasing the deployment of renewable energy sources and accelerating decarbonisation.

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© Gustavo Quepón on Unsplash

This is the challenge of the European StoRIES (Storage Research Infrastructure Eco-System) project, coordinated by researchers at the Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT), which involves a total of 47 partners from 17 countries. Other partners include institutions, research bodies, technological institutes, universities and associations such as ESFRI, the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures, EERA, the European Energy Research Alliance, and EASE, the European Association for Energy Storage, all of which have been working together for some time and have created the nucleus of the European Energy Storage ecosystem.

This is the challenge of the European StoRIES (Storage Research Infrastructure Eco-System) project, coordinated by researchers at the Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT), which involves a total of 47 partners from 17 countries. Other partners include institutions, research bodies, technological institutes, universities and associations such as ESFRI, the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures, EERA, the European Energy Research Alliance, and EASE, the European Association for Energy Storage, all of which have been working together for some time and have created the nucleus of the European Energy Storage ecosystem.

Among the activities that will be developed within StoRIES are a mechanism to make available and accessible world-class research infrastructures and services on energy storage systems, the improvement of materials to reduce costs and make storage technologies more flexible and competitive, and support for the deployment of storage systems. Specifically, ENEA will focus on hybridisation, i.e. the integration of different technologies and storage systems to increase flexibility and efficiency; a roadmap will be drawn up on this aspect, which is considered to be of particular importance; strong attention will also be given to the social, technological and environmental effects of this technology, for which training and information activities are planned.

“StoRIES is a strategic project for ENEA and for Italy, as it will allow us to deepen and decline the concept of hybridisation of different forms of chemical, thermal and electrochemical storage in synergy with many other research groups,” says Giorgio Graditi, Director of ENEA’s Energy Technologies and Renewable Sources Department.

© ENEA

“We will make available to the project our CRESCO supercomputer (the second largest in Italy in terms of computing power and speed), the experimental platform dedicated to the development and characterisation of new materials and components for thermal storage, and the laboratory dedicated to the study and testing of power-to-gas technologies (hydrogen and methane),” concludes Graditi.

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