IMDEA Energy is coordinating the research project “HVDC4ISLANDS,” that aims to address key technological challenges in the future electrical grids: developing high-voltage direct current (HVDC) and hybrid alternating current / direct current (AC/DC) technologies to integrate offshore wind energy and other forms of renewable energy.

In this context, HVDC4ISLANDS will develop control and management systems for “energy islands,” renewable energy hubs designed to accelerate the transition to clean energy. The project aims to identify tools for advanced operation, reconfiguration, and scalability of these systems while ensuring their stability, protection, and interoperability.

The solutions developed in the project will inherently lead to reduced maintenance and operational costs, improved system monitoring and diagnostics, and a lower environmental impact from transmission networks.

Among the expected outcomes are validated solutions for the control, operation, and protection of DC and hybrid networks, the promotion of European leadership in technologies and solutions related to their operation and control and enabling the concept of energy islands both onshore and offshore. These islands are intended to optimize the integration of renewable energy sources into a multi-vector energy system.

The transnational collaboration in HVDC4ISLANDS will help develop case studies for potential future energy island projects in the North Sea, the North Atlantic, and the Baltic Sea. The unlocked potential of HVDC4ISLANDS will accelerate the deployment of renewable energies on land and at sea, providing new and flexible options for grid interconnection and alternative market routes through energy storage, energy conversion and new energy services.

The project “HVDC4ISLANDS – HVDC and Hybrid DC/AC Technologies for Reconfigurable Energy Islands” (CETP-2023-00045) began in December 2024 and will last for 36 months. Its funding comes from the European CETPartnership (Clean Energy Transition Partnership) 2023 Joint Call and involves renewable energy companies and leading European research institutions. Participants include IMDEA Energy (Spain), RWTH Aachen (Germany), the ICCS Institute of the National Technical University of Athens (Greece), the Austrian Institute of Technology AIT and Fronius (Austria), the MaREI institute of University College Cork (Ireland), and SUBSEA7, HYSTAR, and SINTEF Energy (Norway).

This week a team of technicians and managers of the company Huawei from its headquarters in China and its research centre in Nuremberg (Germany) visited IMDEA Energy with the aim of specifying opportunities for collaboration in various topics of common interest such as the control of electricity grids, the integration of renewable sources and batteries, electrochemical storage devices (batteries and supercapacitors) and accelerated testing techniques for their quality.

The attendees visited IMDEA Energy facilities such as the heliostat solar field, the electrochemical devices test plant and the smart energy integration plant, where they attended a demonstration, were interested in the capabilities of the equipment and identified opportunities for further collaboration in R&D projects.

On 5 March at IMDEA Energía we held the event ‘Science and energy with a woman’s name’, an opportunity to reflect and raise awareness about equality in the world of research, academia and industry in the energy sector, as part of the commemoration of the upcoming Women’s Day.

Capitolina Díaz, Lola Storch and Dolores Lucena will be speaking at the event.

Díaz, Professor of Sociology at the University of Valencia and former President of AMIT-Madrid: Association of Women Researchers and Technologists, addressed unconscious gender biases in research and evaluation, analysing practical cases and presenting some possible strategies and steps to counteract them.

The Head of Innovation at Enagás and Professor at ETSIME-UPM, Lola Storch de Gracia, explained several studies related to knowledge and interest in STEM careers from childhood to university, highlighting examples carried out by the Research Group on Sustainable Organisations ETSII-UPM on the current diversity and absence of women in the technology sector. In addition, other issues such as the gender gap or leadership in the labour markets were reviewed.

For her part, Lola Lucena Ferrero, a specialist in asset management in energy distribution and consultancy companies, stressed the global difficulties faced by women and girls when it comes to accessing energy and how they are more vulnerable to energy poverty and climate change.

Thanks to the speakers and participants for their time, knowledge and commitment in this initiative, which has allowed us to deepen our understanding of the challenges and progress towards equality in the field of science and energy and to promote spaces for debate that drive change.

Once again this year, IMDEA Energy’s researchers have organised several activities and workshops aimed at students in order to raise awareness of their work and highlight the names of well-known and less famous women scientists to students.

To this end, we welcomed more than 60 students from the 3rd year of ESO at the IES Velázquez de Móstoles Secondary School.

First of all, there was a contextual presentation in which Alba Fombona, a researcher at the Electrochemical Processes Unit, presented the latest data on female representation in the science sector, as well as the gender gap in some studies and professions in the STEM branches.

After this, the different groups got to know several scientific facilities from the centre’s researchers and participated in scientific workshops such as DNA extraction, or interactive games in which they could demonstrate their knowledge of the subject.

Rebeca Marcilla, Senior Researcher at IMDEA Energy’s Electrochemical Processes Unit, has obtained funding from the European Research Council (ERC) through the ERC-Proof of Concept (PoC) call to advance the development of a new type of redox flow battery (RFB). 134 beneficiaries – 14 in Spain, of which 4 are led by women – have been awarded Proof of Concept funding to explore the commercial or societal potential of their research results previously funded by the ERC. These projects are part of the EU’s research and innovation programme, Horizon Europe.

The ERC-PoC 3-Phase-BAT project involves the development of a new type of flow battery that does not require the use of a membrane, as the electrolytes are separated by thermodynamics eliminating the need for a physical barrier. In addition, vanadium species are replaced by organic redox compounds that are abundant, less costly and have configurable properties, thus addressing the issues of high cost and low performance of some components of these batteries, as well as the limited availability of the materials, which so far hinder the widespread market adoption of RFPs.

Specifically, 3-Phase-BAT proposes the use of a three-phase immiscible liquid system, in which the upper and lower phases serve as redox electrolytes, separated by an electrochemically ‘inert’ intermediate liquid phase that replaces the costly ion exchange membrane.

This new technology builds on the knowledge gained in the project MFreeB ERC-CoG led by Rebeca Marcilla on membrane-free RFBs using immiscible two-phase systems.

The ERC-PoC 3-Phase-BAT project aims to address the challenges related to the low efficiency and limited energy density of batteries by incorporating a third immiscible intermediate phase, which effectively avoids the damaging self-discharge often observed in membraneless flow battery technology.

This ERC-PoC therefore offers a great opportunity to validate this novel technology, explore scale-up as part of the technology transfer process, and define an exploitation pathway for the transition of 3-Phase-BAT technology from lab to industry, with the aim of accelerating market access within five years.

On Friday 24 January, IMDEA Energía moved to the classrooms of the Enrique Tierno Galván Secondary School in Leganés as part of the celebration of Environmental Education Day.

The purpose of this day is to raise awareness of current environmental problems and generate practical solutions in favour of nature from an early age.

Several researchers from the Biotechnological Processes and Thermochemical Processes units gave a presentation on their work to several groups of high school students, as well as setting up two practical workshops, one on the manufacture of biodiesel through the transesterification process and the other on the synthesis of bioplastics.