Developments of the Installed Base Business Unit’s service activities have resulted insignificant progress: control of welding procedures, constant improvement in intervention equipment for PWR and BWR power plants, and the consolidation of an innovative digital product and service offering to enhance our customers’ performance.
For the Projects and Components Business Unit, Framatome’s Le Creusot plant continued its programme to ensure the reliability of low-alloy steel part manufacturing for the EPR2 Project, with full characterisation of demonstration parts made using new manufacturing processes in order to comply with the requirements of ESPN regulations. Carbon mapping of a high-tonnage ingot studied in partnership with Industeel should make it possible to adapt the forging of a primary steam generator base in 2021, without segregation.
The I&C Business Unit is continuing with the development of nuclear instrumentation and safety control products, in particular the next generation of high-security digital I&C, compatible with TELEPERM XS. This addresses the requirement for future I&C renovation projects, delivering major technological innovations in performance, compactness, robustness, and enhanced resistance to threats.
The second priority is support for the development of renewable energies in France and abroad, which play an increasingly important role in the European and global energy landscape.
For renewable energies, storage and hydrogen, the goal of R&D is to identify technological breakthroughs that offer a significant competitive advantage, and to help the most promising technologies emerge industrially, working in partnership with academia, industry and startups. EDF is investigating a wide range of renewable energies and storage solutions: hydropower, photovoltaics, onshore and offshore wind power, solar thermodynamic power, biomass, marine energies, geothermal power, electrochemical batteries, flywheels, flow cells, super capacitors, electrolysers, fuel cells (hydrogen) and thermal energy storage (heat and cold).
For example, in the photovoltaic solar power field, EDF Renewables has launched innovative power plants that are currently undergoing experimental prototyping, such as agri-photovoltaic, floating photovoltaic or bifacial photovoltaic power plants. Tools for dimensioning and calculating specific photovoltaic production are generally developed in parallel. In addition, laboratory experiments allow us to understand the failure and degradation modes of these new technologies (photovoltaic cells, electro chemical batteries, electrolysers, wind turbine), whose technologies evolve regularly.
R&D is also working to develop tools and methods to enhance operational performance and optimise the cost of projects on electricity generation systems that are based on renewable energies, projects on storage and systems for hydrogen generation by electrolysis power by EDF group’s low carbon electricity.
The third priority is to improve the environmental acceptability of our production facilities. Climate change, the marked decline in biodiversity and Earth’s limited resources make EDF a legitimate choice for a low carbon energy mix. The aim of the R&D Division’s initiatives is:
Therefore, for many years, EDF has set up research teams dedicated to biodiversity issues. An ambitious research programme seeking to develop high-performance tools to assess and manage impacts on biodiversity is currently underway, delivering results that can be used immediately to acquire better scientific knowledge of the impacts of EDF production resources on biodiversity and constantly improve biodiversity around power production facilities.
Digital transition impacts the entire electric power system and is a key driver of theelectric and climate transitions described above. The information technology researchprogramme focuses on:
2020 saw confirmation of the central role now played by AI in the programme: firstly, as a foundational technology allowing the value of the huge volume of data to be leveraged, and secondly, by being increasingly combined with other digital technologies such as cybersecurity (intrusion detection) and digital simulation (hybridisation of physical and statistical models, IoT, and blockchain).
Following on from the AI Manifesto for Industry (Manifeste de l’IA pour l’industrie), we launched a joint laboratory with Thales and Total devoted to AI, the goal of which is to develop methods suitable for our industrial challenges, in particular in relation to critical systems. An ambitious roadmap has been drawn up covering explainability, learning through reinforcement, and AI and simulation.
As in previous years, we have contributed extensively to the work done by GroupTask Forces on breakthrough digital technologies: the AI Task Force, the IoT TaskForce, and the Blockchain Task Force. It is important to note the dominant role of this programme in the incubation of a large number of use cases, in particular for production data transfer security and electricity origin traceability.
This year saw R&D entrusted with coordination of EDF’s 5G Task Force, identifying 7 key use cases for group business lines on an experimental basis. R&D work is focusing on the 5G Living Lab, research into cybersecurity, and technology watch.
In terms of simulation, we have started an in-depth review of our software environment for simulation, devising a mechanical simulation platform that constitutes a new, more user-friendly and intuitive resource. The fruit of nearly 20 years of development, it draws a full benchmarking against leading market tools, allowing us to reinforce our strategy and focus on key modules for our studies.
To support digital transition, R&D is continuing to invest in powerful super computers with combined total nominal power of 15PFlops in 2021. They are vital for simulation studies of physics and for automatic learning modules for artificial intelligence.
More than ever, the various types of energy are also at the core of the challenges facing modern societies, with issues raised about its availability, its climatic, environmental, economic and geopolitical impacts, the resilience of energy systems, and access to energy for all. The goal to achieve energy transition by 2050 will require rapid shifts over the next 30 years in terms of uses, technical and industrial changes, and changes in lifestyles and consumption patterns. The challenge of carbon neutrality may cause unprecedented changes in the major systems that structure our lives. It is therefore essential to anticipate the societal and social consequences of these developments, in relation to the independent dynamics at work in society today. R&D develops specific tools to understand these societal issues and employs researchers in human and social sciences who work to understand these developments:
