EnerTEF responds to the soaring demand for reliable AI products in the evolving energy sector. It pioneers a Common Federated AI Testing and Experimentation Facility to bridge the gap between demand and limited availability of rigorously tested AI products. Aligned with European Commission initiatives, EnerTEF leverages foundational projects like the Common European Energy Data Space and AIoD. Through specialized ‘AI Living Labs,’ EnerTEF fosters collaboration between energy stakeholders and AI developers to create adaptive models that align with evolving energy systems. ‘Bridging Centralized Access’ ensures data privacy and security in federated testing, adhering to EU regulations and addressing ethical concerns. ‘Seamless Federated Integration’ tackles integrating AI technologies across domains, enhancing cross-sector collaboration. ‘Long-term Sustainability and Go-to-Market Strategy’ focuses on bringing AI innovations to market. In a nutshell, EnerTEF’s primary goal is to establish a Common European-scale Energy AI Federated TEF, facilitating extensive adaptation, validation, and upscale of AI tools and services across the energy sector. The project’s network of five primary nodes, complemented by three satellites, ensures a comprehensive approach to testing AI-based technologies in real-world operational environments. This setup contributes to the market uptake of trustworthy AI, ensuring their readiness, accessibility, and applicability to real-world scenarios.

KReATIVE is a forward-thinking project aimed at transforming Kranj into a climate-neutral city by addressing its urban mobility challenges and fostering sustainable innovation. The project is designed to enhance collaboration across city departments, significantly reduce car dependency and promote eco-friendly transportation. At the heart of KReATIVE is the development and deployment of digital mobility platforms, such as ride-sharing services and on-demand transport systems, which provide flexible, sustainable alternatives to private vehicle use. KReATIVE emphasizes cross-departmental collaboration within the city’s governance structure. By breaking down silos between municipal departments, the project encourages a unified approach to urban planning and sustainability, ensuring that mobility initiatives align with broader climate neutrality goals. The project’s innovations are not limited to Kranj but are designed to be scalable and replicable across other European cities, particularly those facing similar challenges in their transition to climate-neutrality by 2030. A central feature of KReATIVE is its participatory approach, engaging various stakeholders—citizens, local businesses, city departments, and policymakers—in the design and implementation of sustainable mobility solutions. This involvement fosters a sense of community ownership and encourages behaviour change. The project leverages gamified platforms, where citizens are incentivized through rewards for reducing car use and increasing physical activity, creating a fun and impactful way to promote ecofriendly behaviours. KReATIVE also focuses on testing and implementing car-restrictive measures and temporary traffic regulations. These “living laboratories” generate real-time data and citizen feedback, allowing the city to evaluate the impact of such measures and make informed decisions on long-term implementation. By integrating advanced data-driven algorithms and digital tools, the project enables city planners to continuously monitor and optimize transportation systems, improving efficiency while reducing emissions. Through its focus on citizen engagement, technological innovation, and institutional collaboration, KReATIVE aims to create a resilient, future-oriented urban ecosystem that not only transforms Kranj’s mobility landscape but also serves as a blueprint for other cities seeking to achieve climate-neutrality.

HEDGE-IoT proposes a novel Digital Framework which aims to deploy IoT assets at different levels of the energy system (from behind the- meter, up to the TSO level), to add intelligence to the edge and cloud layers through advanced AI/ML tools and bridge the cloud/edge continuum introducing federated applications governed by advanced computational orchestration solutions. The HEDGE-IoT Framework will upgrade the RES-hosting capacity of the energy systems and will unleash a previously untapped flexibility potential. It will increase the resilience of the grid, create new market opportunities and promote advances in IoT standardization, by introducing and managing a plethora of diversified, interoperable energy services over scalable and highly distributed data platforms and infrastructure. The multi-dimensional framework of HEDGE-IoT comprises the following pillars: (a) the Technology Facilitator Pillar will exploit the computational sharing by offloading applications on the grid edge, towards providing a set AI/ML federated learning and swarm computing applications; (b) the Interoperability Pillar, which leverages on leading-edge interoperable architectures, such as the Data Space architectures; (c) the Standardisation Pillar will enable all involved platforms, systems, tools and actors to seamlessly communicate and exchange data in standardized formats using widely used standards, such as SAREF, etc.; (d) the Digital Energy Ecosystem Enabling Pillar will ensure the creation of an ecosystem facilitating the increased integration of RES and characterized by resilience. Liaisons with EU initiatives for IoT and digitalization will be established (e.g., the AIOTI) and the engagement of stakeholders will be ensured by addressing IoT ethics and cultivating trust among end-users, thus promoting inclusivity. Scalability and replicability studies will be performed and connections with innovators and SMEs will be established through the Open Call mechanism of the project.

Based on the data collected by the partners in the scope of the Slovenian pilot and the understanding of the physical reality behind the phenomena, JSI will develop algorithms for real-time assessment and prediction of the state of the assets. To achieve real-time response, the algorithms will be developed for hierarchical execution using edge computing. Our ultimate goal is to deploy the software we developed during DiTeR and Trafoflex projects locally, including local AI-based weather forecast.

(H2020, 2023-2025)
The Slovenian cities of Kranj, Ljubljana, and Velenje are working on new ways of governing their climate transition – finding common ground for making Pilot City activities in different sectors work more effectively. While Kranj focuses on reducing mobility-related emissions, Ljubljana will center its work on finding uses for industrial and non-industrial (excess) waste heat and Velenje on the consumption of thermal energy in buildings. But as they embark on these different priorities, their collective sights are set on making their responses “more effective, transparent, and responsive.” As part of “UP-SCALE Urban Pioneers – Systemic Change Amid Livable Environments,” the goal is to find new approaches that can be shared in other communities facing similar challenges. The three cities will each create innovation hubs called one-stop shops to act as repositories for their findings, with Pilot City partners in Ljubljana emphasising the centrality of knowledge sharing to the cities’ plans: “We see the project UP-SCALE as an opportunity not only to start developing our own pathways towards climate neutrality, but also to gain new knowledge and become an inspiration to other Slovenian cities and beyond.”

(HE, 2023-2025)
The overall aim of NANCY is to introduce a secure and intelligent architecture for the beyond the fifth generation (B5G) wireless network. Leveraging AI and blockchain, NANCY enables secure and intelligent resource management, flexible networking, and orchestration. In this direction, novel architectures, namely point-to-point (P2P) connectivity for device-to-device connectivity, mesh networking, and relay-based communications, as well as protocols for medium access, mobility management, and resource allocation will be designed. These architectures and protocols will make the most by jointly optimizing the midhaul, and fronthaul. This is expected to enable truly distributed intelligence and transform the network to a low-power computer. Likewise, by following a holistic optimization approach and leveraging the developments in blockchain, NANCY aims at supporting E2E personalized, multi-tenant and perpetual protection.

(DIGITAL, 2023-2025)
SiQUID will implement quantum key distribution (QKD) lSiQUID will implement quantum key distribution (QKD) links between multiple government nodes in Slovenia and a test-bed quantum network between research institutions in Ljubljana for advanced quantum communications protocols. We will coordinate our efforts with public and industrial stakeholders, and we will train key personnel, young researchers and engineers in quantum technology. The first test nodes implemented will be based on our recent first demonstration of QKD links between three European countries (arXiv:2203.11359-paper attached). We will harness directly modulated laser diodes to ensure the phase randomization between adjacent pulse sequences, and we will use a high-assurance random number generator to randomize the choice of the state preparation basis. These improvements promise a higher level of security, a larger range, and a higher key rate. This will form the basis for the implementation of the QKD links between government nodes. To reduce the cost of future QKD networks, SiQUID will investigate the feasibility of cheaper alternatives for the detection nodes by balancing cost against the key rates achievable in metropolitan links. At the same time, we will use superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) to implement high-efficiency links. We will use these to test long-distance links between distant cities in Slovenia, and to nodes close to neighboring countries. Moreover, we will test advanced quantum communication protocols like measurement-device-independent (MDI) QKD and the long-distance distribution of entanglement to further increase the security of QKD implementations, and to prepare the ground for a future full-fledged quantum communication network. We are in close contact with QCI initiatives in neighbouring countries to facilitate the harmonisation of the national efforts, and to facilitate future cross-border links and the implementation of the space segment of EuroQCI.

(DIGITAL, 2023-2025)
SiQUID will implement quantum key distribution (QKD) lSiQUID will implement quantum key distribution (QKD) links between multiple government nodes in Slovenia and a test-bed quantum network between research institutions in Ljubljana for advanced quantum communications protocols. We will coordinate our efforts with public and industrial stakeholders, and we will train key personnel, young researchers and engineers in quantum technology. The first test nodes implemented will be based on our recent first demonstration of QKD links between three European countries (arXiv:2203.11359-paper attached). We will harness directly modulated laser diodes to ensure the phase randomization between adjacent pulse sequences, and we will use a high-assurance random number generator to randomize the choice of the state preparation basis. These improvements promise a higher level of security, a larger range, and a higher key rate. This will form the basis for the implementation of the QKD links between government nodes. To reduce the cost of future QKD networks, SiQUID will investigate the feasibility of cheaper alternatives for the detection nodes by balancing cost against the key rates achievable in metropolitan links. At the same time, we will use superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (SNSPDs) to implement high-efficiency links. We will use these to test long-distance links between distant cities in Slovenia, and to nodes close to neighboring countries. Moreover, we will test advanced quantum communication protocols like measurement-device-independent (MDI) QKD and the long-distance distribution of entanglement to further increase the security of QKD implementations, and to prepare the ground for a future full-fledged quantum communication network. We are in close contact with QCI initiatives in neighbouring countries to facilitate the harmonisation of the national efforts, and to facilitate future cross-border links and the implementation of the space segment of EuroQCI.