Electric transition for buildings and industry also has an important role to play in encouraging the development of distributed renewable energy. Electric applications are all becoming connected and controllable, from basic radiators to electric vehicle charging stations via increasing numbers of white goods applications. These can offer more flexibility for the electricity system.
EDF customers are also becoming engaged stakeholders, with access to information about their energy use virtually in real time, advanced advice on how to make energy savings, and energy efficiency suggestions made via increasingly sophisticated digital interfaces. EDF group subsidiaries’ connected boxes and stations feature algorithms developed by EDF’s R&D: these can provide dynamic management of all applications to achieve targets set by a household in respect of a given budget, comfort, CO2 emissions, or self-production.
The dynamics of the energy transition in the territories are creating new uses of electricity and new expectations. For example, energy communities are emerging: cities have expressed enthusiasm for optimising infrastructures and their management (transport, waste treatment, buildings, energy generation, grids) and aim to become smart cities or “sustainable cities”.
EDF’s R&D is thus contributing to industrialisation and performance of these local ecosystems. Over and above the legal and economic structuring of the energy communities that emerge in collective self-consumption projects, R&D researchers also help to overcome technical barriers relating to the real-time monitoring of local electricity production and consumption.
Data-related issues are also present in the field of heating and cooling networks.EDF’s R&D has helped to design digital twins of networks to optimise their operation.
R&D also supports local regions, for instance by contributing to the community dynamic among industries at Fos-sur-Mer and the Dunkirk sea port, conducting experimental projects relating to energy and materials optimisation at the local level.
Battery storage is a crucial factor in electric mobility. R&D research in this respect consists, firstly, in characterising battery safety and performance in the lab, and secondly, in innovating in the realm of breakthrough technologies with the potential to deliver significant improvements in battery life and/or cost. R&D is also studying non mobile applications for the reuse of batteries that were originally used in electric vehicles (combining them with renewable energies, system services, etc.). In the longer term, R&D will adopt a similar approach for the hydrogen technologies that are used for mobility, including electrolysers and charging stations, as well as fuel cells for heavy transport and light vehicles.
Energy transition towards a low-carbon economy in Europe also involves reducing the carbon footprint of electricity systems, i.e. smart grids. It raises not only technical, economic and regulatory issues and will require taking on new challenges, such as:
In the field of nuclear, hydro and fossil-fired power generation, EDF R&D is developing tools and methods to improve the safety of production resources, optimise their operational lifespan, and increase their performance in terms of output and environmental impact. There are three key priority goals: ensuring the Group maintains its advantage in terms of nuclear power over the long term, developing renewable energies while reducing their cost and increasing the extent to which they are used in electricity systems, while improving the environmental acceptability of our generation facilities.
R&D is working to protect EDF’s assets through actions in line with its policy to improve the safety of facilities, particularly with regard to enhanced performance and extended operating lifespan.
More broadly, the EDF group (EDF and Framatome) works on R&D with the CEA as part of the Institut Tripartite; this partnership was renewed in 2020. In 2017 the three partners launched the Nuclear Plan of Tomorrow Initiative comprising technological building blocks for existing plants and nuclear new build. This policy, already comprising 25 building blocks in 2020, is structured around digital technology, safety and risk management, materials, structures, and their manufacture. For instance, several technology building blocks aim to acquire and capitalise knowledge of the mechanisms involved in component ageing and its impact on the operating lifespan of EDF group nuclear units. Other building blocks are seeking to provide better modelling of threats to power plants such as earthquakes or fire in confined spaces, developing phenomenological approaches combined with large-scale digital simulation.
To support these programmes, R&D is developing digital simulation tools and experimental test resources, as well as tools that are capable of handling the fresh challenges raised by the increase in large sets of digital data, IT security, and new information and communication technologies.
In 2020, encouraged by the success of the ConnexLab experience, which aims to test out new operating and maintenance concepts, R&D launched the “Digital Reactor”project. This is noteworthy in the nuclear industry in that it brings together nine key partners (EDF, CEA, FRAMATOME, SMEs, MSEs, and academics) to develop innovative simulation products and services in the field of reactor physics.
The project will enable any operator to have a digital twin replicating its installation, allowing it to provide training in reactor operation. It also gives engineering departments and design firms working in the industry a computing environment based on the best available techniques, both in terms of available computing power and in terms of state-of-the-art scientific programming.
Furthermore, R&D contributes to the preliminary design of the Small Modular Reactor(SMR) reactor called Nuward.
In 2020, the accomplishments of the Technical and Engineering Division included:
Some of these developments have been in partnership with CEA, EDF, and the French Radiation protection and Nuclear Safety Institute (Institut de radioprotection protection et de sûreté nucléaire, IRSN).
