SunContract & Partners Approved for €4.999M R&D Grant by EU’s Horizon 2020
Dear SunLovers,
We’re pleased to announce that SunContract, together with a consortium of partnering companies, were approved for an R&D grant amounting to €4,999,477.25 ($6.054M USD) to support a collabortive AI-based project we will be embarking on titled “I-NERGY”.
The overall vision and main objective of I-NERGY is to deliver an energy-specific, open, modular framework for supporting AI-on-Demand in the energy sector, by capitalising on state-of-the-art AI, as well as IoT, semantics and data analytics technologies.
I-NERGY will enable AI-based, cross-sector, multi-stakeholder analytic tools for integrated and optimised smart energy management, based on seamless data exchange under respective sovereignty and regulatory principles.
The project aims to conduct 9 pilot projects (in Slovenia, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Croatia, and Latvia) which aim to evolve, scale up and demonstrate an innovative energy-tailored AI-as-a-Service (AIaaS) Toolbox, that will significantly contribute to achievement of a techno-economic optimal management of the EPES (Electric Power & Energy Systems) value chain, especially for SMEs and non-tech industries.
The I-NERGY Consortium brings vast amount of experience by leveraging on the successful achievements of objectives by a variety of completed or quasi-completed projects, funded by the HORIZON 2020 program, among others. As such, I-NERGY will be positioned as an umbrella project at the interplay between AI and energy communities to provide an energy-vertical ecosystem to boost, promote and push AI analytics for energy vibrant EU-level ecosystems.
AI, the cornerstone of the prescribed framework solution is on its own a game changer for the domain of energy with its value proposition being underpinned by the unique capabilities of the involved constellation of technologies — i.e. those of machine learning, deep learning, image processing, digital twins, etc. — to iterate, predict, sense, comprehend, act and learn.
These capabilities render AI as a new factor of production that can drive growth in at least three directions, those of energy commodity networks, DERs (RES generation, buildings, districts and communities), as well as synergies/implications on other energy and non-energy domains (i.e. heat, transport, water, personal safety, AAL, finance).
Horizon 2020 is the EU funding programme for research and innovation
Our backer for this project — Horizon 2020 — is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme with nearly €100 billion in funding — available over 7 years (2014 to 2020).
Grant applications in this programme are extremely competitive with a less than 5% acceptance rate since Horizon 2020 strives to fund only the cream of excellent European researchers and projects.
We therefore would like to take this opportunity to thank the Horizon 2020 Programme for its generosity. By enabling our projects like I-NERGY and (recently funded) BRIGHT project to couple research and innovation, Horizon 2020 is helping us achieve a better energy future founded on excellent science, industrial leadership and the tackling of societal challenges — through the removal of barriers to innovation, making it easier for the public and private sectors to work together in delivering innovation.
