Scientific co-ordinator and researcher on the Horizon Europe I-UPS project from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Dr Silvia Trevisan, has been promoted to Assistant Professor in the Energy Technology Department.
The announcement coincides with Women's Week, where the global day dedicated to women is celebrated every year on 8 March. Now is a good moment to ask her some thermal energy-related questions.
Why did you study engineering?
I have always liked building stuff as a kid – playing with Lego and similar things. At five years old, when asked to draw my home, I literally drew its blueprint (quite nicely too).
Maths, geometry, physics and logic were among my favourite subjects all the way through school. I really enjoy solving problems. In time, I got to learn that by studying engineering I could contribute to, hopefully, leaving the world in a cleaner and better place by developing and supporting more renewable technologies. So, it was a pretty straightforward choice.
What fascinates you about thermal energy?
Well energy in general is key to our world and life. Even if we don’t see it, thermal energy is pretty much needed in everything we do and for everything we have. It’s a big challenge and opportunity for decarbonisation.
How do you plan to facilitate knowledge through your new role as Assistant Professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Thermal Technologies, Industrial Decarbonisation?
I plan to continue collaborating with different industries trying as much as possible to build bridges between them. I like to look for solutions that can leverage technologies to get the most out of their interconnection and joint implementation.
Education and raising awareness is also a key point to achieve any meaningful and long lasting decarbonisation goal. So I want to support dissemination towards different stakeholders highlighting state of the art technologies based on the education of the next generation of engineers.
What needs to be done to highlight awareness about high-temperature heat pumps and thermal energy storage?
In the last couple of years there has been a considerable increase in dissemination efforts with different associations aiming at communicating the benefits of such technologies to different audiences, particularly within the industrial sector. This is great, though more could be still done here.
At a general level, we are still not fully aware of the relevance of thermal energy within global demand. We could do better in communicating the sector possibilities for coupling, like looking at how both thermal energy storage and heat pumps could support and alleviate some of the challenges of the power sector. In this way, we enlarge the main target audience.
Successful projects are definitely needed to raise not only awareness but also reliability and trust toward such solutions. Clear legislation supporting the decarbonisation of the industrial sector is also needed as a key incentive to implement the major energy challenges.
How could industry and utilities benefit from investing in HTHPs and thermal storage?
Several industries could directly benefit from using thermal energy solutions. Key examples are paper plants, chemical sites, and food industries which are massive users of medium temperature heat. They would lower their operational costs, reduce taxes, and grant themselves more energy independence. These industries could be decarbonised today with commercial, or close to commercial, level solutions.
Power utilities, Transmission System Operators and Distribution System Operators would also benefit from such installations. Thermal energy solutions are flexible assets that can alleviate the strain on the grid imposed by increasing renewable penetration and electrification by not only energy shifting, but also by providing grid supporting services like downward regulation.
For example, high temperature heat pumps working with thermal energy solutions can quickly support instability in the grid, in the case when wind and solar supply exceeds demand. The heat pump consumes the excess energy which is stored as heat. This heat, or thermal energy, can be used later at peak times, for example in heat and steam applications used in manufacturing processes. This smoothes the electricity load profile, mitigating grid congestion or shortfalls.
Thank you Silvia.