On Thursday 26th January from 11:OO to 12:30 (CET), SunHorizon with other three projects participated in the first BUILD UP organised and hosted webinar of 2023. The event took place under the January 2023 Topic of the Month “Renewable heating solutions for buildings”.
In a nutshell, the webinar presented two projects that explore technological solutions for heating/cooling coupled with renewables (SunHorizon and HAPPENING) and two projects that explore aspects of energy/thermal energy storage (MiniStor and ComBioTES).
The Q&A and discussion session provided an opportunity for the audience to ask questions and for the projects/speakers to explore interesting commonalities between the projects (e.g., their technologies, themes, challenges, outcomes, and more), lessons learned, and future exploitation opportunities for the outcomes of the projects.
After a brief introduction to BUILD UP by Aranzau Galán, Senior Researcher at Université Libre de Bruxelles and BUILD UP’s Editorial Board Member, she introduced the webinar topic and the agenda and moderated the entire event.
The first project which took the floor was SunHorizon, presented by the Project coordinator Serena Scotton (RINA Consulting SpA) and Andrea Gabaldon Moreno (CARTIF). Serena introduced the vision and objectives of the projects. Then, Andrea went into more detail – presenting data, problems, and lessons learnt – on the explanation of the technology packages developed by the project, in the demo cases of:
- Madrid (Spain) with the TP4: brine water heat pump assisted with improved PVT solar panels
- Sant Cugat (Spain) with the TP3: Hybrid adsorption-compression chiller with high-vacuum solar panels
- Riga – Sunisi and Riga – Imanta (Latvia) with the TP2: Innovative gas-fired heat pump with improved PVT solar panels
Andrea concluded her presentation by saying that in SunHorizon there has been collaboration, but it was difficult to coordinate and integrate inputs from various technology providers in all the demo sites. Together with that, there has been a low social acceptance of these unknown technologies. Furthermore, the inclusion of installers had language barriers (all studies were translated), and a shortage of installers and supplies. Collaboration is the key to the success of the project goals!
The other projects were the following: HAPPENING, presented by Jon Iturralde Iñarga (Tecnalia); MiniStor, showcased by Carlos Ochoa (International Energy Research, IERC) and Georgios Martinopoulos (The Center for Research & Technology, CERTH); finally, the fourth project ComBioTES explained by Arnaud Bruch, (The French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, CEA) and Eleonora Alamaro (AMIRES).
Then, we had an active Q&A session with the project’s presenters.
Please, find the SunHorizon presentation here and the recording of the webinar on BUILD UP’s YouTube channel (here).
More information on the webinar is available here.
