Summary

Electric cars are already being used to stabilise the electricity grid, primarily by varying the charging power. Enabling the return of electricity to the grid, known as Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G), creates further opportunities to balance the grid. However, the potential for frequency regulation from the electric cars of single-family households depends on the owners' acceptance of using the batteries for frequency regulation and their willingness to plug in the chargers. Furthermore, a significant part of the cars and the charging infrastructure need to support V2G application.

To integrate users' willingness and ability to contribute to V2G in the evaluation of the potential for frequency regulation, an interdisciplinary approach is required that considers technical and economic aspects as well as users' conditions, behaviours, and motivations. Therefore, the project will conduct user studies to investigate the motivations and perceived conditions for single-family households to contribute to frequency regulation through V2G. Based on the user studies, we will quantify the potential for electric cars to support the grid with frequency regulation and quantify the economic value for households depending on plug-in behaviour and charging strategies. The potential and value of frequency regulation will then be placed in a broader context to see how households' electric cars can contribute to the grid in the long term.

Project goals

• Increased knowledge of the motivations and perceived conditions of single-family households to contribute to frequency regulation through V2G technology at home, in relation to other services where the battery creates benefits for the household, the local grid, or the energy system at large.
• Recommendations for the development of frequency regulation services and incentives aimed at single-family households with electric car charging, so that the services can be designed considering households' conditions, expectations, and motivations.
• Quantification of how individual households' practical ability to contribute power and energy to frequency regulation through V2G depends on their plug-in behavior and charging strategy.
• Recommendations for the development of technical standards for V2G to improve the ability of electric cars to deliver frequency regulation.
• Increased knowledge of how the economic value from frequency regulation through V2G for individual households varies depending on connection behavior and charging strategy.
• Increased knowledge of how the aggregate potential and economic value for a fleet of electric cars to contribute to frequency regulation through V2G depends on plug-in behaviour, charging strategy, and response time outside the charging session.
• Increased knowledge of system effects and potential conflicts and synergies between frequency regulation and other services where V2G can create benefits for households, the local grid, and the energy system at large.

Purpose and goal

The goal of this project is to develop a general framework to facilitate the use of advanced predictive maintenance and planning under uncertainty in industry. The project aims also to reduce business risks by switching to more efficient and AI-based maintenance strategies and thereby increasing resource efficiency and competitiveness in Swedish industry.

 The project develops the following:

1. A modular platform for prediction models - Where existing and novel prediction models for component wear can be combined, and incrementally refined over time.
2. New and improved component lifetime prediction methods - Based on machine learning and causal inference, taking uncertainty into account.
3. New methods for dynamic and robust maintenance planning under uncertainty.
4. A simulation and evaluation tool - That can be used for decision support to evaluate and compare advanced maintenance strategies regarding risk and cost. 

The tool for comparing and evaluating the potential of different maintenance strategies will help to significantly decrease the business risk involved in changing from an old but historically proven maintenance strategy into a more efficient one. Therefore, it will enable a transition to more efficient and AI-based maintenance strategies in industry, which will have a huge impact on the resource efficiency and competitiveness of industry at large.

Implementation

The project is implemented through five work packages (WP), described here below:

• WP1 - Project management and knowledge transfer
  • Lead: RISE. Aim: Effective project organization.
• WP2 - Probabilistic modular platform for model integration  
  • Lead: RISE. Aim: Develop a modular platform based on a common probabilistic representation of lifetime predictions, costs, and risks, that will be used as a glue between both data driven and simulator-based models for different components, and the optimization algorithms
• WP3 - Data-driven causal estimation of remaining useful life with uncertainty measure
  • Lead: Scania CV. Aim: Build data-driven wear models, for prediction of remaining useful life, including uncertainty measures and causal inference.
• WP4 - Dynamic robust maintenance planning under uncertainty 
  • Lead: Siemens Energy. Aim: Develop an optimization model for maintenance planning that considers the predicted remaining life of components as well as business requirements
• WP5 - Maintenance strategy evaluator
  • Lead: RISE. Aim: To develop a tool for simulating maintenance strategies, with the purpose of comparing and assessing the gains of different maintenance strategies.

Budget and participants

The project budget accounts to 11.18 million SEK, of which 5.59 million SEK is financed by Vinnova, as part of the call Advanced and innovative digitalization 2023 - call two. The main coordinator is RISE – Research Institutes of Sweden, and project partners are: Scania CV and Siemens Energy. The consortium partners have experience in both applied and basic research on predictive maintenance as well as ML and AI for over two decades.

Objectives: 

EU-HYBNET (Empowering a Pan-European Network to Counter Hybrid Threats) project aims to empower its network to fight against hybrid threats by proliferating knowledge and facilitating cooperation between industry, practitioners and academia, and by providing advanced solutions for network collaboration and delivering recommendations for training, standardization and industrialization of cutting-edge innovations. 

The main project objectives are: 

1. To enrich the existing network countering hybrid threats and ensure long term sustainability. 
2. To define common requirements that can fill knowledge gaps, deal with performance needs, and enhance capabilities of research, innovation and training endeavours concerning hybrid threats. 
3. To monitor developments in research and innovation activities as applied to hybrid threats.
4. To indicate priorities for innovation uptake and industrialisation and to determine priorities for standardisation for empowering the Pan-European network to effectively counter hybrid threats.
5. To establish conditions for enhanced interaction with practitioners, industry and academia for meaningful dialogue and for increasing membership in the network.
6. To foster capacity building and knowledge exchange on countering hybrid threats.
7. To create a basis for establishing effective synergies with existing European, national and sub-national networks of practitioners and other actors countering hybrid threats. 

Concept and approach 

To achieve the objectives of the project, we will apply an iterative approach, consisting of three full scale project cycles in three core activity areas:

1. research (incl. training), 
2. innovation monitoring, and 
3. recommendations for standardisation and innovation uptake (including industrialisation).

 Additionally, in a concluding fourth cycle, the project will collect results from each of the previous three cycles, draw conclusions, and make suitable recommendations.

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During the last 30 years the climate challenge has primarily been approached as a risk and as a problem for companies. The focus has been on reducing emissions in companies and their value chains. Policies, tools and incentive structures have been developed based on the assumption that the best a company can do is reduce its own emissions and reach “Net-Zero”. This is based on a “static problem approach”, an approach where the large companies, the infrastructure and consumption patterns, are assumed as static and companies are only sources of emissions. Hence innovation has largely been limited to improvements, often incremental, in existing systems. This static problem approach made sense from 1997 when the Kyoto protocol was agreed and the rich countries agreed to reduce their emissions by 5%. But since 2015 and the Paris agreement, when the world agreed to deliver solutions to stay below 2 °C and aim for 1.5 °C while supporting global sustainability, a static problem approach is not enough. It is time to expand the climate and innovation agenda. 

While companies must ensure that the emissions over the value chain are compatible with a 1.5 °C development path, these emissions are only one side of the coin, and the less important from an innovation and a long-term perspective. Now the time has come for companies to stop taking their current business model as given and start to focus on what society needs and how they can deliver such solutions in ways that are globally sustainable.

The original reason society developed the idea of companies with limited liability was to accelerate innovation in areas where companies could deliver important contributions to society. As we now urgently need solutions that can deliver on human needs in sustainable ways, companies need to use their innovation capacity as solution providers. For this to happen the innovation ecosystem must shift focus from only a static problem approach to also include a dynamic solution approach where companies move from only climate risk innovation to also embrace climate solution innovation.

The need for companies as solution providers becomes even more important when we shift the focus to what is ultimately needed, i.e. not just solutions to stay below 1.5 °C, but a future where everyone can live flourishing lives on a flourishing planet. Instead of the reduction of emissions from existing companies and structures, the main challenge from a long-term perspective is to avoid emissions as we make people’s lives better, with the help of innovation. For this innovation to happen we need a new approach – a dynamic solution approach – an approach that focusses on companies as solution providers that deliver on human needs in ways that are globally sustainable.

When it comes to changes that are more than optimization of existing systems it is important to focus on start-ups, as it is among these where the future is born. This is where most groundbreaking innovations in areas such as energy, mobility, and nutrition have reached society the last 30 years. It is also among start-ups where innovations have been born that allow us to meet, find information, work, and find friends in totally new ways. Hence, we need also to shift focus from large established companies to start-ups and new clusters with new innovative ways of delivering on human needs if we want to support global sustainability.

In order to unleash the full potential of companies they must move beyond product substitution. The four-step strategy developed by the Net-Zero Compatible Innovation Initiative was created to support a shift from a narrow product substitution and profit driven approach among companies, to a purpose driven approach with a focus on flourishing lives on a flourishing planet, where profit is a tool for positive change. It also encourages large companies to go beyond thinking of start-ups as only helping them to reduce scope 1-3 emissions. Instead, the four-step strategy supports and encourages large companies to approach start-ups as crucial partners for business model innovation that identify new revenue opportunities linked to delivering sustainable solutions that deliver on human needs, i.e. deliver avoided emissions in society. 

Through Win the Future, clusters of multinational companies and start-ups, together with key stakeholders in the innovation ecosystem will gain information, tools, and training to implement an expanded climate and innovation agenda, supported by:

• New tools such as scanning for human needs- and solution leadership
• Business model development for climate solution providers
• Innovative matchmaking
• Capacity to use established tools and concepts such as Planetary Boundaries and Science Based Targets to support an expanded climate and innovation agenda.
• New roles for the innovation ecosystem, including incubators, will also be explored.

We are looking for leadership and the work will be tailor-made for each participant. No resources are required beside active engagement and help to identify relevant data for smart solutions and business model development. We plan to bring an initial set of leaders to COP30 in November 2025 and those with interest for this should register before the end of March. Welcome to becoming a part of the future we need.

Register your interest to #winthefuture

The growth of fast fashion and textile production is associated with a substantial increase in global greenhouse gas emissions. A promising alternative to reduce the environmental impact of textiles is prolonging the useful life of clothes through repairs. The project intends to generate robust and data-based evidence on consumers’ motivations to repair garments and preferences for characteristics of garments that require repairs.

In this project, we rely on qualitative and quantitative approaches to investigate both garment’s features and personal attributes that drive consumers’ repair decisions. More specifically, to generate qualitative insights, we use the social practice theory, which considers a behaviour as consisting of materials (objects), competences (skills, etc.) and meanings (such as social significance). The project conducts a series focus group discussions to understand how garment repairs can fit into everyday life practices.

Our quantitative approach is grounded in the theory of random utility maximization in which we examine consumers’ preferences for various characteristics of garments that require repair services. For this purpose, the project develops and conducts a choice experiment survey on scenarios the mimic garment repair decisions consumers face in reality. The quantitative analysis generates insights about the trade-offs consumers make between repair costs and important garment characteristics including durability, damage severity, repair time and replacement value.   

The project intends to also identify and test behavioural interventions that encourage consumers to repair garments. We leverage a digital platform for garment repairs that is under development by one of the project partners, Circle Wear AB, to test our proposed interventions.  Better understanding people's motivations and preferences for repairs leads to offering tailored services in the short-term, and consequently to a real-life transformation of clothing consumption habits where repairs are prioritized over purchasing new clothes.