News & Events

Symposium Thermochemical Energy Storage

Februari 14, 2023

Event date: March 8, 2023

We would like to remind you to register for the symposium Thermochemical Energy Storage organized by the Department Applied Physics and Science Education and the Eindhoven Institute for Renewable Energy Systems EIRES (TU/e).

On 8 March 2023 (13:30-17:00) at the TU/e campus, the Filmzaal, Zwarte Doos (Registration is mandatory!)

Thermochemical energy storage (TCES) is a promising technology for compact long term heat storage. Reversible physical-chemical reactions between solids and gasses can be used to store and release heat. By selecting a specific reaction type, one can tune in on the temperature levels required by the application. The unique feature of TCES is that the energy is stored loss free as long as the solid and gas are separated. This makes the concept ideal for long term storage. There are several scientific challenges for implementing the technology in real applications, which range from material properties, device complexity to system integration. In this symposium international experts in the field will cover materials development and system integration.

Second International Conference on New Pathways for a Just and Inclusive Energy Transition: Connecting Multiple Stakeholders and Levels

November 30, 2022

Event date: 20-21 June 2023

You are cordially invited to the second international conference on New Pathways organised by the University of Groningen in collaboration with Hanze University of Applied Sciences on New Pathways for connecting actors, levels of governance, institutions, and technical domains, to achieve energy transition.

After the successful first international conference on New Pathways in 2019, we are organising this one with a focus on linking different stakeholders and levels. This is a multi-disciplinary conference with a special focus on socio-technical aspects of energy transition that aims for an energy system that is predominantly based on renewable sources.

More information here.

TNO Webinar: Switch to the hybrid energy system

TNO Webinar: Switch to the hybrid energy system.
On the 1st of February 2023.

How will our future electricity grid remain stable and affordable? Sign up for the webinar and get insights into the technological and societal solutions for our future energy system.

Programme webinar:

Challenges system integration offshore wind
Jan Willem Wagenaar, R&D Portfolio Manager Wind Energy, TNO

Energy Management Systems for future energy systems
How can smart energy management solutions support the integration of large amounts of electricity produced by offshore wind farms into the energy system from 2030?
Iratxe Gonzalez Aparicio, R&D Portfolio Manager System Integration Wind Energy, TNO

Weak grid in rural areas
Chris de Visser discusses the potential applications of smart energy grids in rural areas.
Chris de Visser, Business Unit Manager Wageningen Research

Operational status SWITCH lab
Jan Willem Wagenaar

Use case: Shore based power in Rotterdam
Floor Schipper, Project Manager, Port of Rotterdam
How having a high percentage of sea-going vessels plugged in at the quay by 2030? So that diesel generators can be switched off.

NWO-NERA Energysymposium ‘Promoting Interdisciplinary Research towards a successful Energy Transition’

October 20, 2022

Event date: Friday November 11, 2022.

On behalf of NWO and Netherlands Energy Research Alliance (NERA), we are pleased to invite you to the first edition of the NWO-NERA Energy Symposium ‘Promoting Interdisciplinary Research towards a successful Energy Transition’ to be held on Friday November 11, 2022.

The energy transition is a challenge that requires solutions from many disciplines, ranging from technical innovations for batteries, to strategies to get citizens to make sustainable decisions. An interdisciplinary approach can be very successful in accelerating the energy transition. At NWO, interdisciplinary collaboration is a requirement and a central focus for many research projects.

Why should you attend?
At this event, several energy-related projects funded by NWO will have the opportunity to present their results to an interdisciplinary audience. All event participants are either involved in an NWO project working on an Energy Transition solution or a key stakeholder. This event is the place to broaden your interdisciplinary network.

Webinar: Offshore wind under pressure

October 31, 2022

Event date: Monday November 21, 2022.

Offshore wind energy is growing enormously, but this growth comes with challenges. To maximise the value of large volumes of wind energy in the future energy system, we need to ensure feasible business cases for developers. Sign up today for the webinar on the 21st of November and get insights into two elaborated scenarios for a profitable offshore wind business in 2030.

Register for this event here.

TU/e EnergyDays

The short and the long term: decision-making in times of climate change

September 26, 2022

Eventdate: Thursday 06 October 2022

We are feeling the consequences of climate change now, but the more severe impacts will happen further in the future. Decision-makers, in government and business, need to weigh long-term risks against short-term needs. Crises enlarge the problem. Should we build those houses now, despite rising risks of flooding? In the rush to build energy infrastructure for fast-increasing renewables, how do we make it climate-resilient? Burning coal so gas storage can be filled, but worsening climate change and losing international credibility?
With a behavioral scientist, an electricity transmission operator, a young climate activist and a regional politician, this EnergyDays reflects on such questions and discusses how decision-makers can handle them.

Annual ARC CBBC Symposium and official opening ARC CBBC Lab at Groningen University

March 18, 2022

How do politics and economics influence the transition of the chemical industry? How can we combine sustainability and economic feasibility? During the ARC CBBC symposium on April 13th we discuss the political and economic aspects of the road towards a circular and sustainable chemical industry.

The event will be hosted by Groningen University and will take place at the beautiful Academy Building in the centre of Groningen. We invite you to join us and to also celebrate the official opening of the ARC CBBC lab at Groningen University together with us.

Invitation NWA-ORC 2022 Matchmaking

March 9, 2022

Meet the applicants of the initiatives in Research along Routes by Consortia (ORC) between 24 and 29 March and start a collaboration in an interdisciplinary and knowledge-chain-wide consortium.

Four matchmaking events: NWO organises the online events together with representatives of the NWA routes.The 393 initiatives submitted have been allocated across four online meetings:

Experienced and driven program board launched GroenvermogenNL

January 24, 2022

Marjan Oudeman, Paulien Herder and Paul de Krom take office as program directors for the GroenvermogenNL growth fund program effective February 14, 2022. With an initial reservation of € 338 million from The National Growth Fund. This supports the GroenvermogenNL foundation in its transition to a green hydrogen economy and green chemistry.

With the appointment of the program board the investment program GroenvermogenNL starts. At the end of the first quarter of this year the R&D and human capital program will be rolled out. In parallel, a first tender for small demonstration projects will be opened in mid-March. Manon Janssen (former figurehead of the Top Sector Energy), who together with her colleagues from High Tech Systems and Materials (HTSM) and Chemistry (ChemistryNL) put together the program board, is pleased with the new board: “We choose for administrative experience and strong connectors who are willing to direct. I am very grateful to all three of them for their willingness to take on this social task for the Netherlands.”

Conference Next-Generation V+ PV Materials

January 23, 2022
Next-Generation V+: PV Materials conference on 4 – 6 July 2022, Oosterpoort, Groningen, the Netherlands.

This international conference covers the main aspects of the science of materials and devices that are paving the road towards the highly efficient, stable organic and organic-inorganic hybrid solar cells necessary for mass production; Contributions concerning materials synthesis, photophysics, device physics, modeling and any related issues will be discussed.

This conference is sponsored by the University of Groningen, therefore we can offer very low participation fees. Our confirmed invited speakers:

Henk Bolink (University of Valencia), Antonio Facchetti (Northwestern – Weinberg College), Silvana Botti (University of Jena), Ferdinand Grozema (TU Delft), Gianluca Coletti (TNO), Shuxia Tao (TU Eindhoven), Silvana Botti (University of Jena), Niels Damrauer (University of Colorado Boulder), Monica Lira-Cantu (Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology)

Registration and abstract submission is open now!
Read more.

Innovation and the rise of solar energy

January 18, 2022
The sun is an infinite source of energy for all life on earth. For several decades, we humans have been able to convert the light of this star into electricity and heat.

In time, we can be independent of the use of fossil fuels. A smart approach is required to lead our pathway forward to a positive solar future. TNO is therefore innovating in order to make solar energy affordable and available to all.

In order to achieve national and international climate objectives, we can and must harvest much more energy from the sun than we currently do. The about 10 gigawatt-peak (GWp) of installed solar energy capacity in the Netherlands could be increased to 50 GWp by 2030 and 200 GWp by 2050 with minimal impact on spatial and ecological environment. Read more.

Research on immune system response and low-cost energy storage awarded ERC grants

January 10, 2022
For TU/e researchers Anthal Smits and Antoni Forner-Cuenca the new year has started with great news as each has been awarded European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants worth 1.5 million euros. Smits will use the funding to work on immune system response to implants, while Forner-Cuenca will explore new affordable and renewable battery storage systems. The researchers can use the funding for their research over the next five years.
With his ERC Starting grant, Antoni Forner-Cuenca who is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, aims to make an impactful contribution to the field of electrochemical science by investigating new low-cost energy storage technologies. “Motivated by issues with renewable energy technologies, there has been lots of recent progress in electrochemical energy storage for large scale applications,” says Forner-Cuenca. “For instance, redox flow batteries have emerged as promising systems, but these technologies have high costs.”
Read more.

NERA Position Paper

December 18, 2021
NERA Position Paper-Energy research in the coalition agreement.
There were cautious cheers in the NERA Scientific Board meeting when several passages were read from the coalition agreement.For example, when reading back the plea of NERA for large coherent and interdisciplinary programs, covering the whole knowledge chain, for climate neutral technologies. And with the plan to install a minister for climate and energy, also the message that the government needs to take more control over the energy transition seems to be heard. With science given the role of advisor by installing an independent scientific advisory board. All important steps that seem to break with the philosophy that a free-market economy will solve all our problems, indicating a growing acknowledgement that things are more complicated than that. Read more.

TU Delft collaborates on development of Amsterdam data heat network

December 14, 2021
TU Delft is launching – in collaboration with infrastructure specialist Firan, the City of Amsterdam and the AMS Institute – the ‘Digital Heat’ project in the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam (MRA). The goal is to develop a future-proof low temperature heat network in Amstel III Zuid using residual heat from a nearby data centre. The project serves as a ‘demonstration’ in which the researchers want to show that data centre heat can be used on a large scale after removing (financial and technical) uncertainties and developing ready-made connection concepts.
Read more.

ECCM Kickstart DE-NL Project by Tsampas Granted

December 13, 2021
The NWO executive board has awarded thirteen applications in the ECCM KICkstart DE-NL Call.
ELEVATION of DIFFER group leader Mihalis Tsampas is co-applicant in one of the awarded projects; a project on earth abundant electrode materials and methane convertson.The project is a collaboration between DIFFER and UTwente on the Dutch side, and Fumatech, RWThAachen University and FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. The project aims at building an efficient electrolyzer based on earth abundant electrode materials. ECCM KICkstart DE-NL is intended for short, exploratory, cross-border and public-private projects between Germany and the Netherlands in the field of Electrochemical Conversion and Materials (ECCM). Read more

Solar-driven hydrogen production from water splitting

December 8, 2021
PhD-student Qiuhua Liang has explored the promising electrode materials for oxygen evolution by molecular modeling.
For the sustainable development of humanity, future efforts are necessary to develop effective technologies to reduce fossil fuels. Solar-driven hydrogen production from water splitting can be an attractive way to supply clean energy. However, the efficiency of the water splitting is limited by the reaction at the anode. Therefore Qiuhua Liang investigated some promising anode materials that may help improve the efficiency of the water splitting. Read more.

Green hydrogen: indispensable and unifying

November 9, 2021

Partners researching the production of green hydrogen – Paolo Pescarmona is making key discoveries in a laboratory at the University of Groningen. While alumnus Jan-jaap Aué is leading a project at Hanze University of Applied Sciences to scale up this kind of knowledge into an industrially usable process. Northern knowledge institutions are collaborating on this project and others, within the University of the North. The plan is for the Northern Netherlands to evolve into a fully fledged ‘Hydrogen Valley’ (emulating the success of Silicon Valley). Read more.

UvA researchers develop solar-powered chemical mini-factory

October 14, 2021
Professor of Flow Chemistry Timothy Noël, with his team at the Van ’t Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences at the UvA, developed a fully operational standalone solar-powered mini-reactor. This ‘mini-factory’ could potentially be used in the future to produce fine chemicals in remote locations – on Earth and perhaps even on Mars.

The researchers present their unique fully off-grid photochemistry system in a paper published in the scientific journal ChemSusChem. Read more (Dutch)