The project is focussed on application of estimation and predictive control in electric vehicle battery system and vehicle dynamics control in order to protect the electric vehicle battery from a premature degradation while minimally deteriorating the car driveability. Batteries are one of the most expensive and weakest links in electric cars, and it is necessary to ensure their exploitation in the vehicle in conditions that degrade them as little as possible. The need for the greatest possible energy recovery during braking and the best possible dynamic performance of the vehicle exposes the batteries to stress that violates their integrity in a currently uncontrolled way.
The main goal of the project is to develop a software module for battery protection of an electric vehicle and the way of its integration with the vehicle dynamics management system. The module dynamically limits the battery charge / discharge current and the air conditioning of the battery compartment in order to limit the rate of battery degradation with the least possible impact on the dynamic performance of the vehicle.

The project is carried out in close collaboration with industry partner Rimac Automobili that develops and produces electric sports cars, drivetrains and battery systems.

The project is funded from the call Strengthening R&D and Innovation Potentials (STRIP) through the Operative Programme Competitiveness and Cohesion for Croatia in period 2014-2020. The STRIP call was launched by the Croatian Ministry of Science and Education.

City lighting is among dominant infrastructure in cities where modernisation is one of the most cost effective investments from techno-economic perspective of energy efficiency. The project aims at developing centralized and distributed model predictive control algorithm and electronic controllers with wireless communication for predictive and autonomous adjustment of lighting intensity based on various micro-location external factors in the city (energy consumption, pedestrian and road traffic intensity, climate conditions) that achieves significant energy savings, reduces investment costs, increases safety and enables integration of various city infrastructure with additional diagnostics capabilities and a strong potential for creating smart city foundations.

The project aims to achieve 20% of operational costs reduction and 30% of investment cots reduction of city lighting, experimentally validated in a living lab.

The project is carried out in close collaboration with industry partner LED-Electronica, the producer of 15.000 city LED lamps annually, corresponding controller and communication electronics, cloud-based software platform for monitoring and control, and various services – and with over 60 references of successful implementations.

The project is funded from the call Strengthening R&D and Innovation Potentials (STRIP) through the Operative Programme Competitiveness and Cohesion for Croatia in period 2014-2020. The STRIP call was launched by the Croatian Ministry of Science and Education.

The renewable energy sector in Adriatic Region is on the rise. A mindful and up-to-date approach to renewables can also unlock marginal areas' potential and ensure equitable energy access. Still, without proper expertise, this growth puts the value and identity of landscapes at risk and, generally, the provisioning of key nature goods and services.
To avoid pitfalls and reap the benefits, various strategies must work in parallel: technological development, academic research, capacity building, and policy design. The cultural and mental shift required is significant and needs to be fast and effective. To tackle these challenges, ADRION TRAINEE raises multidisciplinary competencies and skills on the topic of Renewable Energy by designing a joint “Master’s Degree in Renewable Energy” (in English). It contributes to laying down the basis for enhanced cooperation between EU and IPA countries, as the support to the EU enlargement process while encouraging the effective use of future EU funds for research and innovation in renewable energy.
The project is supported by the Interreg ADRION Programme, funded under the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and IPA II fund.

The aim of this project is to develop an integrated system for centralized monitoring and control of critical infrastructure systems in residential and commercial buildings. Critical infrastructure systems include system of heating, ventilation and air conditioning, lighting, power supply, fire protection, fire alarming, video surveillance and access control. Named subsystems are dominantly installed as separate systems in buildings and thus their control is considerably complex since each should be controlled separately, and thereby the possibilities for their communication and interaction do not exist. Since belonging to the same building they should constitute a unified whole for technical surveillance of electrical and mechanical installations in the building.

Actual and upcoming climate changes will evidently have the largest impact on agriculture crops cultivation in terms of reduced harvest, increased costs, and necessary deviation from traditional farming. The project goal is to develop mathematical models of different growth stages of wheat by applying the artificial intelligence and utilize it for prediction of crop development and harvest. Analysis of the big data will be carried out with respect to various climate conditions, artificially created and permuted in the prototyping chambers, and corelated with plant development identifiers in different growth stages. The models will be publicly and interactively used through a portal for prediction of plant development in real and hypothetical climate conditions, with accumulated and archived feedback from farmers as additional data for tuning of the developed models.

By strengthening the capacity of partners and conducting scientific research, this project aims to develop a comprehensive system of supervision and management of dynamically loaded structures to preserve their integrity, ie to prevent damage and extend its functionality. The development of innovative methodology includes optimization of sensor system monitoring, diagnostics of damagesmario in laboratory conditions, experimental research of fatigue properties of materials and development of inverse and statistical models, structural similarity theory, numerical algorithms for estimating structural fatigue and allowable loads, and control systems permitted operating modes. After the validation of the methodology on laboratory models and the real construction of the Končar wind turbine, the procedure of intellectual property protection over the developed methodology and commercialization of the project results will be initiated. As a partner in the project, FER will design ways of automatic control using methods of mathematical optimization and computer geometry that are non-invasively added to existing algorithms and preserve the integrity of the structure, and the applicant FSB and partner Faculty of Civil Engineering in Rijeka deal with methods management bases. The project leader at FER is prof. dr. sc. Mario Vašak.

The Danube Region holds huge potential for sustainable generation and storage of renewable energy. However, to date this region is highly dependent on energy imports, while energy efficiency, diversity and renewables share are low. In line with the EU climate targets for 2030 and the EUSDR PA2 goals DanuP-2-Gas will advance transnational energy planning by promoting generation and storage strategies for renewables in the Danube Region by coupling the electric power and gas sector. DanuP-2-Gas will bring together energy agencies, business actors, public authorities and research institutions via the Danube Energy Platform. Based on the platform developed during DTP project ENERGY BARGE it will incorporate all pre-existing tools and i.a. an Atlas, mapping prior unexamined available biomass and energy infrastructure. Further, a pre-feasibility study utilizing an optimization tool for efficient hub design will identify suitable locations for sectors coupling hubs and combination of two idle resources in the Danube region. Unused organic residue (e.g. straw) will be processed to biochar for easy transport along the Danube River and as basis for synthesis gas generation. Adding hydrogen produced from surplus renewable energy allows to upgrade this syngas to renewable natural gas. This will enable storage of surplus energy in the existing gas distribution grid increasing energy security and efficiency. All needed resources are available in the Danube region and the 10 partner countries. Thus, a transnational approach along the main transport route (Danube River) to share these resources is the key. The legal framework influencing the concept will be assessed on individual country level, leading to a transnational strategy with national roadmaps for simple implementation. Finally, impact of DanuP-2-Gas will be ensured via trainings on the developed tools and workshops elaborating future projects and business models with interested stakeholders.

Current tendencies in the Danube Region (DR) to integration of energy-efficiency (EE) measures and renewable energy (RE) are not followed by EE&RE adequate interactions to enable cost-optimal operation of the building as a whole. Distribution system operators (DSOs) are reluctant in allowing additional capacities of intermittent RE in the grid as they engage investments into the grid and a costly reserve for secure operation. DSOs are interested in introducing coordinated energy exchange with prosumers through dynamically changing conditions, e.g. via optimized price profiles for netto energy exchange. Currently neither of the countries in the DR has regulatory/technology framework developed for inception of building-grid cross-spanning energy management schemes.
The main objective of the 3Smart project is to provide a technological and legislative setup for cross-spanning energy management of buildings, grids and major city infrastructures in the DR. It will provide optimal economical value to EE&RE investment in the building and optimized costs on the grid side and motivate installation of distributed storages for improving energy security in the DR.
The project outputs are: (i) Modular software tool for energy management on building and distribution grid side, (ii) Five pilot actions in different DR countries including buildings and grids with intersected technology/regulatory setups and (iii) Strategy to enable city-wide energy management at the regulatory level in the DR.
Main target groups are regulatory energy agencies/ministries (for updating regulatory set-up), DSOs and suppliers (improving grid effectiveness), local authorities and regional energy agencies (reducing RoI for investments in RE&EE); R&D institutions (new modules development).
Major innovative moment is in vertical two-way synchronization through all the modules via simple interfaces to attain optimal operation of the buildings and the grid, and easy modules add-on to the existing systems.

It is challenging to provide a low carbon energy supply in cities in a style of energy storages. Especially in historical urban centres it is very difficult to achieve these results, because interventions in this specific area meet strict architectural protection constraints, involve higher implementation costs and often come in conflict with town planning policies. Therefore, the main objective is to improve and enrich energy and spatial planning strategies targeting historical city centres by focusing on integration of energy storage systems to enhance the public institutional and utility capabilities. The pilot actions implemented in specific sites will demonstrate the various energy storages that can be adapted and transferred to other local or regional environments. The storages will provide good show-cases to the local authorities which can benefit in sense of improved energy efficiency and increase usage of renewable energy sources and lower costs for energy. The transnational strategy will provide the recommendations for improving the energy and spatial planning. The energy management tool will enable to monitor all features that proof the effectiveness of the pilot installations. Additionally, the autarky rate tool will indicate the economic and reasonable utilisation of storages. By establishing the stakeholder deployment desk Store4HUC will reach the relevant players to share the knowledge and also transfer it to other additional audience. It will enable to gain wider consensus of the pilot instalment and further tool usage, especially with the signed memorandums of the future tool utilisation. The project approach foresees also peer review actions, mutual learning within project consortium and exchange of experiences and knowledge with target groups what can enhance the transnational added value. Innovative energy storage installation and storing of renewable energy sources determines the innovative aspect of Store4HUC.

Current tendencies in the Danube Region (DR) to integration of energy-efficiency (EE) measures and renewable energy (RE) are not followed by EE&RE adequate interactions to enable cost-optimal operation of the building as a whole. Distribution system operators (DSOs) are reluctant in allowing additional capacities of intermittent RE in the grid as they engage investments into the grid and a costly reserve for secure operation. DSOs are interested in introducing coordinated energy exchange with prosumers through dynamically changing conditions, e.g. via optimized price profiles for netto energy exchange. Currently neither of the countries in the DR has regulatory/technology framework developed for inception of building-grid cross-spanning energy management schemes.
The main objective of the 3Smart project is to provide a technological and legislative setup for cross-spanning energy management of buildings, grids and major city infrastructures in the DR. It will provide optimal economical value to EE&RE investment in the building and optimized costs on the grid side and motivate installation of distributed storages for improving energy security in the DR.
The project outputs are: (i) Modular software tool for energy management on building and distribution grid side, (ii) Five pilot actions in different DR countries including buildings and grids with intersected technology/regulatory setups and (iii) Strategy to enable city-wide energy management at the regulatory level in the DR.
Main target groups are regulatory energy agencies/ministries (for updating regulatory set-up), DSOs and suppliers (improving grid effectiveness), local authorities and regional energy agencies (reducing RoI for investments in RE&EE); R&D institutions (new modules development).
Major innovative moment is in vertical two-way synchronization through all the modules via simple interfaces to attain optimal operation of the buildings and the grid, and easy modules add-on to the existing systems.

Buildings and railway traffic systems are examples of complex technical systems that consume significant energy amounts so as to enable their inner processes to evolve as required. Thereby the requirements on dynamic functioning of these systems can be achieved by different system interactions, whereas some of them are more preferable than the others from the standpoints of energy consumption or other criteria like price of operation or equivalent pollution.

The global objective of the project 3CON is to research and develop optimal control techniques on significantly different large consumers – building systems and railway traffic systems – in conceptually identical way: by applying the principle of hierarchical decomposition of systems and cooperative optimal controls between the hierarchy levels. Computed energy consumption profile on the lower level directly maximizes the global economic gain of the system operation in the presence of system constraints (e.g. allowed temperatures or fixed train travelling time). This finally enables the proactive role of these largest consumers in energy grids of the future (smart grids). The project is coordinated by Assoc. Prof. Mario Vašak, PhD.