INSHIP – Integrating National Research Agendas on Solar Heat for Industrial Processes

The aim of the project INSHIP is to implement a European Common Research and Innovation Agenda, engaging European research institutes in an integrated structure and developing coordinated R&D activities in order to achieve technological advances in the field of Solar Heat for Industrial Processes (SHIP).

These R&D activities will in part be structured as Coordination Actions, focusing on aligning policies, on networking activities or on knowledge dissemination. They will also include a Research Infrastructures Access Scheme fostering Joint Research Activities, which will be aligned with the specific research topics included in the ECRIA and will be open to consortia involving INSHIP partners and industry.

The INSHIP Consortium consists of 11 Core partners and 17 Networking partners, representing a major portion of the European key stakeholders in the field of R&D on SHIP using non-concentrating and concentrating solar technologies.

With 28 participating R&D institutions from 12 European countries, the project INSHIP aims to establish a European Common Research and Innovation Agenda (ECRIA), engaging major European research institutes in an integrated structure and developing coordinated R&D activities (TRLs 2-5) in order to achieve technological advances in the field of SHIP through:

• improving integration of low-temperature (LT) and medium-temperature (MT) technologies which meet the operation, durability and reliability requirements of industrial end users;
• expanding the range of SHIP applications to the energy intensive (EI) sector through the development of suitable process embedded solar concentrating technologies, so that applications are no longer limited to the LT and MT ranges;
• increasing the synergies within industrial parks, through centralized heat distribution networks and exploiting the potential synergies of these networks with district heating and with the electricity grid,

thus aiming at a full-fledged exploitation of SHIP potential across sectors and temperature levels in both existing and new industrial capacities.

The INSHIP ECRIA is in part structured into Coordination and Support Actions (CSA), which focus on coordination objectives related to infrastructures & Joint Research, alignment of policies, knowledge dissemination and networking. It also comprises Coordinated Projects (CP), which aim to develop R&D activities dedicated to TRLs 2 to 5 of low-, medium- and high-temperature technologies/processes and the integration of SHIP into the energy system. These are to be developed on the basis of researcher mobility actions and Infrastructure Access activities, which will be hosted by INSHIP ECRIA partners but will be open to participation by external research and industrial partners.

After the successful completion of the first two reporting periods after 30 months of implementation and the completion of reporting and submission of deliverables in the following months, all so far due milestones are reached and all deliverables are submitted.
In particular, the activities in Researcher Mobility and Infrastructure Access have gained momentum. Through the exchange of researchers between INSHIP partners, the coordination of joint activities in the European research landscape on SHIP is strongly promoted. First infrastructure access activities have been implemented together with relevant industry participation. In the further course of the project, joint mobility actions for both infrastructure access and researcher mobility had to be changed to online collaborations due to the Corona pandemic. Nevertheless, most of the activities could be implemented successfully and strengthened the European collaboration on SHIP.
In the technical work packages, a total of 44 research activities (Coordinated projects) have been started and are continuously developed further.
To support the development of the INSHIP ECRIA, national stakeholder groups on SHIP have been successfully implemented in all 10 defined research countries. In February 2019, a European Workshop for the alignment of SHIP RTD and support of SHIP innovation through innovation strategies was held in Brussels, collecting relevant inputs and feedback from stakeholders and industry.

With the support of the European Commission and INEA a joint H2020 CSP projects newsletter was established in 2017. INSHIP joined this initiative with currently 15 other H2020 funded CSP projects to produce an update on the latest activities in these projects twice a year. You can find the latest issue here. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.

In September 2019, a Coordination Meeting was held in Trento, Italy, hosted by core partner Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK), where the group photo had been taken. The last “physical” meeting was held in January 2020 at the University of Évora, Portugal. Further project meetings were held as Web meetings due to the Corona pandemic, including the successful final project meeting in December 2020.

A further Highlight was a Workshop, which has been jointly organized by Fraunhofer ISE, AEE INTEC, Gleisdorf (AT) and ETH Zürich (CH) and was held as online event in November 2020, titled „Solar Heat for Industrial Processes (SHIP) – A Key to Industrial Decarbonisation“. About 65 participants could benefit from experiences and views from Researcher, Applicant, Supplier and Financing perspective and interactively discussed further steps and chances for a broader market rollout, for example by hybridization with other heat supply technologies. Moderated by ETHZ, the workshop contained the following contributions:

• SHIP – Quo Vadis?  -  Status on opportunities and challenges
  (Fraunhofer ISE)
• We use SHIP!  -  Experiences from a successful SHIP plant in a German brewery        
  (Bad. Staatsbrauerei Rothaus AG, Grafenhausen-Rothaus)
• We do SHIP!  -  SHIP projects from the supplier’s perspective
  (Industrial Solar GmbH, Freiburg)
• Ready for financing SHIP  -  A financing model for the implementation of SHIP plants
  (REENAG AG, Vienna)
• SHIP in the international perspective  -  Ongoing activities ready to address challenges
  (AEE INTEC, Gleisdorf)
• Discussion Round
  (Fraunhofer ISE, AEE INTEC, Presenters and Participants)