During the FlexRICAN 3rd Consortium Meeting held in Le Bourget-du-Lac, Grenoble, France, on April 9-11, one of the project milestones was completed. M14 Online Training of RI staff 1 was conducted on the third day of the Consortium Meeting in G2Elab, welcoming hybrid participation.
The recording of the training is now available to a larger audience on the FlexRICAN YouTube channel. The topics covered during the training were a reflection of a multi-faceted approach to energy-related challenges in Research Infrastructures (RIs). Hence, the training was of high interest to employees of RIs involved in the FlexRICAN Consortium. The 1st FlexRICAN Training – Flexibility in Energy Management in RIs gathered 71 trainees with 34 physical and 37 remote participants from RIs within the FlexRICAN Consortium.
The training you can now view on the FlexRICAN YouTube channel consists of four sections highlighting a holistic approach to energy efficiency and energy resilience of RIs:
- Energy flexibility delivered by Justine Bastard-Rosset and Marion Perrin of Energy Pool focuses on electrical power grids – systems connecting producers and consumers. This session provides information on producer and grid flexibility, discussing various types of power reserves. It is followed by a discussion on mechanisms for increasing consumer flexibility (i.e., increasing or decreasing consumption on demand). Optimised like this, the grid will consume less and will use more renewable sources.
- Renewable energy integration (solar, wind, and biogas) presented by Diego Herrera Ruiz of the European Spallation Source (ESS) highlights the design and implementation of regenerative energy sources at RIs. Various software tools are discussed in this section for analysis and prediction of the potential of renewable energy technologies under conditions specific to your research infrastructure.
- Waste-heat recovery in RIs by François Debray from LNCMI-CNRS, part of EMFL, focused on how to recover heat from cooling water used in systems such as Bitter magnets, spallation targets, lasers, and klystrons. The session explored how to efficiently harvest this waste heat and either store it for later use or schedule its production to align with periods of energy demand.
- Efficient Use of Battery Arrays presented by Václav Bernášek from ELI ERIC focused on how battery storage can enhance the stability, sustainability, and cost-efficiency of Research Infrastructures (RIs). It demonstrated how to select the optimal storage system based on specific needs and how to integrate it effectively into existing energy systems.
Stay tuned for FlexRICAN Training 2, where the focus will shift to the implementation, operation, and maintenance of energy systems.
The Training milestone was led by Marc Uhlarz from HZDR, who is also the author of the above-mentioned reflection on the FlexRICAN training.
