The nGEL project is a collaborative journey towards a more sustainable energy future. Welcome to "The nGEL Innovators", a series dedicated to introducing the key partners of the project. In the first episode, we are presenting to you Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the coordinator of the nGEL project.
In the current era, ideas and innovations, drive and inventiveness have gained more importance than any other time in human history. Government, industry and society are facing major challenges and rapid changes due to geopolitical conflicts, demographic changes, economic turmoil, and the climate and energy crises.
However, these challenges have also opened up new opportunities to shape our future with skills and expertise, enabling us to find answers to the central questions of our time and emerge stronger from these crises. The German-based applied research organisation, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, has been working exactly on dealing with these issues since its inception.
Founded in 1949, Fraunhofer has been playing a crucial role in the innovation process by prioritising research in key future technologies and transferring its research findings to the industry. The organisation is currently operating 76 institutes and research units throughout Germany.
With nearly 32,000 employees, mostly scientists and engineers, Fraunhofer generates an impressive annual business volume of 3.4 billion euros, of which 3.0 billion euros comes from three different stems of contract research. The first stem, industry and license fee revenue, is Fraunhofer's unique selling point in the German research landscape. Another share of contract research revenue comes from publicly funded research projects, while the final one is from the funding supplied by the German federal and state governments.
Role in the nGEL Project:
Fraunhofer is one of the key consortium members of the nGEL project, shouldering the crucial responsibilities of leading two of the work packages- the Development of Cold Thermal Energy Storage (work package 2), and Project management and coordination (work package 7).
In Work Package 2, Development of Cold Thermal Energy Storage, Fraunhofer selects cost-effective and efficient storage materials for cold thermal energy storage (CTES) and provides an optimal design of CTES to achieve the required charging and discharging rates through modeling and optimisation. Throughout the project period, the organisation will also validate the performance of the CTES and develop a large-scale cold thermal storage system for the demonstration site.
In Work Package 7, Project Management and Coordination, Fraunhofer ensures the legal, contractual, ethical, financial, and administrative management of the project, grant, and consortium. They coordinate the knowledge management, deliverables, milestone reports, and cost statements while also organising consortium meetings and ensuring effective consortium management.
Meet the Fraunhofer representative:
Project Coordinator, nGEL Project
Head of Monitoring and Artificial Intelligence, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
Email: shahin.jamali@ieg.fraunhofer.de
The nGEL project has received funding from the Horizon Europe Framework Programme (HORIZON) Research and Innovation Actions under grant agreement No 101148170.