The first StoRIES Summer School entitled "REPowerEU and the need for energy storage in Europe" was held at the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia (Athalassa Campus) and in the Energy Institute of the Cyprus Institute PROTEAS from 29 May to 1 June 2023 with the attendance of 19 young scientists from and beyond the StoRIES consortium. The main objective of the Summer School was to provide and exchange knowledge on the importance of energy storage in Europe in the context of REPowerEU to accelerate the green energy transition. Experts from the StoRIES consortium shared with the students their knowledge on the issues related to energy storage, including needs, existing and future technologies, hybridization, sustainability, legal issues and economics.
The first official day of the Summer School provided an overview of energy storage, its hybridization and its importance in the overall European energy system. The summer school was hosted by the Cyprus Institute’s premises of the Athalassa Campus of Cyprus Institute in Nicosia. The speakers were Fadi Comair (Cyprus Institute), Stefano Passerini (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, University La Sapienza), Linda Barelli (University of Perugia), Laura Meda (Eni), Kourosh Malek (Forschungszentrum Jülich), Manuel Baumann (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), Nestor Fylaktos (Cyprus Institute) and Alaric Montenon (Cyprus Institute). The lectures of the Summer School 2023 can be found here: StoRIES Summer School 2023 and the presentations can be here.
On the second day, the attendees spent the day at PROTEAS, in the Limassol region and had the opportunity to interact with the StoRIES experts about their work. In the morning they visited the CSP infrastructure of PROTEAS and gave short presentations on their work. The presentations were intended to be easy to understand for all participants, even for those who do not work in the presenter's field. The three best oral presentations were awarded. In the afternoon, there was free time for discussions, getting to know each other and networking at the beach.
The last day was dedicated to working in groups. The students were assigned to 4 working groups (WG) to discuss the implications of the REPowerEU measures on selected applications and to design hybrid energy storage concepts to tackle challenges.
WG1 focused on off-grid applications in an isolated grid and was asked to design an energy storage system for an off-grid island power system to reduce fossil fuel reliance. The task of WG2 was to design an energy storage concept for decentralized energy supply systems in urban areas for decarbonisation, self-sufficiency and security of supply. WG3 aimed to design Europe's decarbonised transport sectors considering available energy storage technologies and renewable fuels. WG4 developed an implementation and acceleration strategy for the decarbonisation of energy-intensive industrial sectors using energy storage technologies.
All groups discussed the potential of renewable energy, the availability of natural sources and the geographical conditions in Europe and examined the applicability of different energy storage technologies for the mentioned applications. The work resulted in 4 presentations providing SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) of the proposed energy concepts. The work in the group was prepared and conducted by two StoRIES experts from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology: Hüseyin Ersoy with expertise in sustainability aspects of energy storage and Peter Holtappels whose focus is on chemical energy storage.
The summer school was a very successful event and received a lot of positive feedback from the participants. The next StoRIES Summer School will take place in 2024.