“Europe wants to be climate-neutral by 2050, and renewable energy is becoming increasingly important. The aim of FLEX4FACT is to develop an end-to-end ecosystem that increases the flexibility of production processes and energy flows in Europe, from North to South. In this project, digital twins (DTs) and machine learning techniques are used to increase production flexibility and manage complex operational scenarios. The FLEX4FACT technology development strategy takes a modular approach to create a rich framework of development opportunities for the energy transition in which all stakeholders can participate and benefit.
Currently, complex process industries and the mixed cluster and distributed renewable energy flows segment are not covered. In fact, at least three key elements of the FLEX4FACT approach differ from current offerings:
1. Enabling industrial flexibility through digital process twinning and machine learning techniques to tackle complex operational scenarios and realise the full potential of the selected industrial cases.
2. The end-to-end approach of the FLEX4FACT aggregator platform, covering the full range of technologies required to achieve the results.
3. A modular and multi-tiered approach that utilises flexible, hybrid architectures, open protocols and standard interfaces. This enables greater flexibility of the system itself and the associated service offerings, removes barriers to entry for providers in the value chain and ensures data communication with existing legacy IT systems.
As a digital enabler for flexible energy consumption, the FLEX4FACT platform will meet the needs of companies of all sizes, including SMEs, which are affected by rising energy prices and have less "financial muscle" to deploy a combination of IT, production, and energy solutions.
The project includes five different use cases, two of which are in the process industry with high energy consumption and three in the discrete manufacturing industry with different challenges in terms of control systems or surplus flows.
The FLEX4FACT project consists of a balanced European consortium in which critical technologies are developed and implemented by multiple partners in five different industrial contexts.
