During last week’s networking seminar hosted by the EU commission regarding the upcoming Horizon 2020 offerings within the area of energy, VisBlue took the initiative to host an individual seminar about the energy solutions of the future.

More specifically, the seminar dealt with the possibility of upgrading existing building stock from passive energy-consumption to active energy-production in close correlation with future smart grid solutions.

Horizon 2020

The participants of the seminar counted institutions such as advisory engineering firms, a number of European universities and representatives within the electronics industry.

VisBlue's aim was to establish a collaborate consortium with representation from both solar cell manufacturers, smart grid electronic developers as well as European research institutions to make an offer on a specific Horizon 2020 offering entitled "Upgrading smartness of existing buildings through innovations for legacy equipment". Approved Horizon 2020 projects usually obtain between 3 and 6 million Euros in grants from EU funds.

VisBlue's objective is to involve and demonstrate the Danish redox flow batteries' collaboration with local solar cell manufacturers, smart grid electronics, interface solutions and the central electrical supply network.

All in all, 17 institutions took part in the seminar, 9 of which VisBlue is now working together with as potential cooperating partners.

Great European interest and new initiatives within redox flow solutions

The ERRIN conference in Brussels emphasizes the focus that generally permeates the development of new solutions within energy storage. Accordingly, there was a clear interest in the Danish work regarding the downscaling of redox flow batteries among the solar cell manufacturers, representatives from the the Danish regions, as well as energy consultancy firms.

Concurrently, numerous foreign firms have started showing an interest in the area and thus this shows a tendency that it is no longer the big players, like RedT, that dominate the market.

Several spinout companies which, like VisBlue, work closely together with universities throughout Europe participated in the ERRIN conference. Here, focus was on the development of organic electrolyte and in that connection we experienced a great interest in our ORBATS project collaboration with DTU, Vestas and Harvard University. A project, which looks into the development of future generations of electrolyte for redox flow batteries.

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