Research Facility 2.0: Towards a more energy-efficient and sustainable path

Research in many cases requires large infrastructures, which often use significant amounts of energy.

In particular, research at some of the large-scale facilities, such as particle accelerators, which are either hosted or used at European Level are very energy intensive. Power usage may reach 100 MW or more, with energy consumptions comparable to small towns.

To make progress in science, these large-scale infrastructures are essential despite their energy consumption requirements.

At the same time, our society is faced with the enormous challenge to transition into a carbon-neutral economy, and to minimize our footprint in terms of energy usage from non-renewable sources, and our output of substances which burden the environment. For this reason, research infrastructures need to develop and use energy efficient technologies.

The way we operate our infrastructures needs to be re-evaluated. Intelligent solutions which reduce energy consumption need to be developed.

Through intelligent algorithms the energy usage of our infrastructures needs to be adjusted to the available resources, such as renewable energy, and should help in providing an overall stable energy supply to society.The RF2.0 consortium vision is to design and operate accelerators in the way that they can run safe and stable anytime on 100% renewable energy supply, i.e., almost independently from the public power grid.To achieve this vision, comprehThis projects originality lies in the comprehensive analysis of large research infrastructures energy management problem, from component to system level, both at experimental physics and energy engineering level, and in developing and testing in realistic environments of possible corrective actions.The RF2.0 project will involve 6 world renowned research infrastructures for the acceleration of particles, of which 5 of European Interest, an energy technology lab, and 4 SMEs focused on the (co-)development and technology transfer of new energy solutions.