In the special, 30th edition of the professional journal EGE (energy, economy, ecology and ethics) in the "new technologies" category, an article was published about the successful collaboration between FER and Led Elektronika d.o.o. on the SmartCityLight project. The article describes the current state of public lighting and emphasizes the goals of the SCL project - research and algorithmic and circuit development of a distributed and autonomous control-telemetry platform that, by predictive adaptation to future profiles of microlocation conditions (weather conditions, density of vehicle and pedestrian traffic, etc.), achieves significant energy savings, lowers investment and maintenance costs while simultaneously increasing safety conditions and visual comfort for users.

The Ambassador of the State of Israel to the Republic of Croatia, H.E. Gary Koren, visited FER on March 15th, 2023. The occasion of the meeting was to further strengthen the bilateral relations between the Faculty and the State of Israel in the scientific research and educational field. After the meeting with the FER Management, Ambassador Koren visited our Laboratory for Renewable Energy Systems - LARES where he was hosted by our team members,  Dorijan Leko and Hrvoje Novak PhD , who showed him what we are working on and what our current projects are.

In Europe, it currently takes an average of 171 km for food to travel from farm to kitchen, and global food logistics account for a staggering 26% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Despite this, large quantities of food are wasted daily. The FoodMAPP project seeks to address these challenges in line with the European Strategic Plan for reducing the impact of climate change. This plan involves strong and influential changes in the food industry, including reducing food waste and changing the fragile and complex delivery chains of industrial producers to create a new, fair, and sustainable food industry. The FoodMAPP project aims to optimize food supply chains by reducing waste and promoting local food production. It is funded by the Horizon Europe Marie Sklodowska-Curie program for researcher exchange, together with additional funding from the United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) program for research and innovation. The project aims to support the transformation of food delivery chains by enabling and promoting transparent local supply from local production, including family farmers and processors, directly to customers. Over four years, extensive market intelligence will be gathered from all stakeholders involved to understand market needs and preferences, with the goal of achieving a transparent localized food supply chain. This knowledge will be applied in the form of precise information to all stakeholders, laying the foundation for a new phase of a dynamic geoinformation search platform for local producers to supply and sell directly to consumers. The project will support an interdisciplinary consortium of European partners, which includes FER as the Croatian representative, as well as technical, business, food, and social academic partners from England, Spain, Belgium, and Hungary, and industrial partners from France and Austria. The project coordinator is Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vinko Lešić from the Laboratory for Renewable Energy Systems - LARES at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing , and partners include Ghent University (Belgium), Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary), CREDA (Center for Research and Development of Agri-food, Spain), and Bournemouth University (United Kingdom). Food industry partners are the Institute Paul Bocuse (France) and Ronge & Partner (Austria). The project began on March 1, 2023, and a kick-off meeting was held on March 6-7 at FER, which hosted world-renowned academic and industrial representatives.  

A new project in LARES, ADRION TRANSNATIONAL MASTER IN RENEWABLE ENERGY “ADRION TRAINEE” (INTERREG V-B Adriatic-Ionian ADRION Programme 2014-2020) started its activities o n 2 nd January 2023. The project is supported by the Interreg ADRION Programme, funded under the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and IPA II fund. Project’s overall objectives is to raise multidisciplinary competencies and skills on the topic of Renewable Energy , to lay down the basis for enhanced cooperation between EU and IPA countries, while encouraging the effective use of future EU funds for research and innovation in R enewable E nergy. The partnership includes 11 organizations and 6 countries: U niversity of P atras, Department of Chemical Engineering, GREECE (Leader Partner) Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologn a, Department of Electrical, Electronic and Information Engineering, DEI, ITALY IUAV University of Venice , Department of Architecture and Arts, ITALY University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, HRVATSKA Algebra University College , HRVATSKA University of Novi Sad , Faculty of Technical Science , SERBIA International University of Sarajevo, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA University of Tirana, Department of Industrial Chemistry, ALBANIA G reen Technologies LTD , GREECE Energo-data , HRVATSKA Solar Info Community srl (Benefit Enterprise) , ITALY The total Budget for the project is 795.000 EUR .

We are happy to share with you the DanuP-2-Gas Optimization Tool presetntation . It explains the usage of the a tool for optimal sizing of power-to-gas hubs built in the DanuP2Gas project in which FER with LARES participated as a project partner. Optimization result is not only the specification of the obtained P2G hub but also includes time diagrams of consumed and produced energy and material, i.e. the tool also gives optimized scheduling of the P2G hub operation. To learn more about the tool, its full scheme, how to use it, and its mathematical background, please read its User Manual , see the video or contact the developers: filip.rukavina@fer.hr; antonio.karneluti@fer.hr; mario.vasak@fer.hr

On January 16 th 2023, web portal egradnja published an interview with head of our laboratory prof. dr. sc. Mario Vašak who presented LARES activities and research results in predictive control of buildings. The interview in Croatian can be reached here, while the inter view in English can be reached here .

Our LARES member Assoc. Prof. Vinko Lešić, PhD, has been elected as IEEE Region 8 Member Activities Vice Chair for 2023-24 by the votes of representatives from nearly 50 countries of Europe, Middle East and Africa. Elections were held during 119th IEEE Region 8 Committee Meeting held 15-16 October 2022 in Cairo, Egypt. Vinko will supervise several focused subcommittees tailoring and delivering programs and opportunities for more than 80,000 engineers and scientists.