This year CERN has contributed to a wide range of European-funded projects, tackling topics that range from stroke care to wave energy to open science.
In total, 13 new projects began either in 2024 or at the tail end of 2023.
Three of these projects are funded under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), the European Union’s funding programme for doctoral education and postdoctoral research, and have been awarded to scientists working in CERN's Theoretical Physics department.
Of the 13 projects, five are funded under the Research Infrastructures calls of the Horizon Europe programme. The topics range from harnessing big data, to using AI to improve data collection from research infrastructures, to making accelerator facilities more energy efficient.
One newly launched project that CERN is participating in is UMBRELLA, which aims at transforming stroke care across Europe. The project takes a holistic approach to the entire stroke care pathway and uses AI and cutting-edge digital technologies to improve stroke prevention and diagnosis, reduce time to treatment, and prevent long-term damage.
Another project, MARES, aims to vastly improve wave energy converters (WEC) – devices that capture energy from ocean waves. The project looks to make the power take-off systems – the part of the WEC that converts wave motion into electricity – more efficient by designing a new reciprocating superconducting generator, the core component of the power take-off system. Wave power has great potential as a renewable energy source, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stating it could produce 29,500 terawatt hours of energy globally per year – almost 10 times Europe’s annual electricity consumption of 3,000 TWh.
The table below shows the 13 projects involving CERN that began either in 2024 or at the end of 2023.
The main substation in BE1 at CERN where the first phasor measurement unit was deployed as part of the RF2.0 project's activities at CERN
Particle accelerators are energy-intensive, consuming up to hundreds of gigawatt hours annually, comparable to small- or medium-sized European cities. This, combined with their reliance on non-renewable energy sources and significant raw material requirements, pose environmental challenges.
That is why the Research Facility 2.0 (RF2.0) project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation, is exploring innovative solutions to make accelerators more sustainable.
The project focuses on four points:
Developing new highly efficient components (permanent magnets and solid-state amplifiers)
Enhancing power consumption flexibility and network services (power electronics, direct current networks, fast measurement systems)
There are 10 partners, including five of the largest particle accelerator facilities in Europe – ALBA Synchrotron (Spain), CERN, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY in Hamburg, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, and MAX IV Laboratory (Sweden) – supported by four specialised technology companies and with Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) coordinating the consortium.
It is running for three years between 2024 and the end of 2026 and is backed with a total of €5.6 million.
Improving power quality in accelerator electrical power distribution grids
It is still early in the project but there has already been marked progress towards achieving the goal of improving power consumption flexibility and network services at accelerator facilities.
As part of the fast measurement systems developments CERN, together with Swiss smart grid solutions company Zaphiro Technologies, are deploying 24 phasor measurement units (PMUs) in selected locations across CERN’s electrical power grid, as shown in figure 1, significantly enhancing its monitoring capabilities.
By validating these solutions through demonstrator projects, one of which will take place at CERN, RF2.0 seeks to reduce accelerators' environmental impact and benefit other energy-intensive facilities, for example medical centers, data centers and other industrial plants, with innovative, flexible energy management strategies.
Figure 1: Locations of PMUs on CERN's electrical power grid. Point 2 (ALICE) will be fully monitored (i.e. all of its connected loads will be monitored in detail)
The benefits for CERN
The electrical power distribution systems in particle accelerator facilities typically use standard SCADA systems characterised by slower dynamics, as is the case at CERN. The deployment of PMUs will provide several benefits, including the ability to:
Analyse perturbations coming from the upstream electrical transmission grid
Understand how these perturbations can impact CERN’s electrical power grid as well as various subsystems and components
Increase grid resilience and provide guidelines for future accelerators, in particular the proposed Future Circular Collider (FCC)
With the help of the PMUs, which are capable of monitoring voltage and current fluctuations in real-time with high sampling frequency and accuracy, CERN aims to:
Create, in collaboration with Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), a data-fed digital twin of CERN’s main electrical power grid focusing on the LHC
Monitor the power quality of the grid and perform harmonic content analysis with the aim to better understand and classify in categories the various types of disturbances and identify mitigation actions and possible optimisations to increase the efficiency of the electrical power grid
Communicate detected events to the SCADA system
Figure 2: Motivation and Objectives from the deployment of PMUs on CERN's electrical power grid
First PMU and recorded events
So far, two PMUs have been installed at CERN. One in BE1 (CERN’s main 400 kV substation) and one in the new data centre recently opened on CERN’s Prévessin site. The rest will be installed during the year-end technical stop of the accelerators at CERN, which is in place over the winter period.
Zaphiro Technologies has also developed a dashboard to visualise all the recorded events and a few notable ones have already been recorded by the PMU installed in BE1. This marks a milestone for the project and the future installations.
The accuracy of the measurements and their high sampling frequency will pave the way for CERN to better understand and classify the voltage disturbances that impact its electrical power grid and prove as an excellent input to the digital twin which will unlock the potential for future improvements.
Figure 3: The first voltage disturbance on voltage phase C recorded with the PMU in BE1 on 13 September 2024 at 06:58 in the morning with a voltage decrease of 39% from the nominal value and a duration of 60 ms. This caused a trip on the grid and the stop of the accelerators
The author would like to acknowledge the full RF2.0 project team, Jean-Paul Burnet, Mario Parodi, Giuseppe Cappai, and Isabel Amundarain Arguello for making this work possible.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovationprogram under grant agreement No. 101131850 and from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education,Research and Innovation (SERI).
The recently launched Research Facility 2.0 project is deploying 24 phasor measurement units on CERN’s electrical power distribution grid to analyse grid perturbations, improve power quality and develop a digital twin for greater efficiency
Funded under Horizon Europe, the HEARTS project, that aims at providing access to high-energy heavy ion radiation testing facilities for space exploitation and space exploration, held its first annual meeting at beginning of February 2024. In a hybrid format, the meeting was attended by representatives from the five beneficiaries, the European Commission and two external expert reviewers. HEARTS also welcomed a new member, Cosylab, who joined the project thanks to the Hop-On Facility programme.
The meeting covered various topics related to HEARTS’ ongoing and future activities, such as the upgrade of the HEARTS@CERN facility, the development and characterization plans of GSI’s Galactic Cosmic Ray simulator, and the collaboration with other international partners. In an introductory talk, Markus Brugger, leader of the Experimental Areas group at CERN, and former CERN R2E project leader, went back to the history of radiation to electronics tests at CERN, from the first ideas at the beginning of the century to the construction of a dedicated facility at CERN in the East Area, namely the CHARM mixed-field facility.
One of the highlights of the meeting was the presentation of the results of the heavy-ion campaign at CERN in October 2023, which demonstrated the suitability of the developed beams and related services for high-energy heavy ion testing, in accordance with the radiation effects user requirements. The campaign was a success, as the tests showed very promising results that will further prepare the facility and its beams in order to accommodate radiation effects users from October 2024.
Rubén García Alía, HEARTS Project Coordinator, expressed his satisfaction with the project’s achievements and praised the cooperation and dedication of all the members. He also welcomed Cosylab as a new project beneficiary and said he is looking forward to working with them on improving the user interface to the experiments. He said that HEARTS is a successful example of how European institutes, industry and academia can work together to boost Europe’s research infrastructure competitiveness, thus ensuring European strategic autonomy.
The annual meeting will be followed in a couple months by the Period 1 Report, which will summarise the activities and achievements in the past year and a half, as well as its plans and objectives for the next year.
In early February, the first annual meeting of the HEARTS project laid the foundations for European strategic autonomy in high-energy heavy ion testing for space applications.
