Smart Energy

Thousands of people, including none other than Queen Máxima, walked on the unique floor tiles made from recycled thermoset biocomposites during the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven. Researcher Lennart Zoeter from the HZ research group Biobased Building at MNEXT created these special tiles for the OPZuid project BRIC. "It may sound simple, but recycling a thermoset composite is incredibly challenging."

In the Academic Workshop Climate & Energy at Tilburg University, MNEXT (Avans University of Applied Sciences), Alliander, Stedin, Enexis, Essent, the Province of Noord-Brabant, Tilburg Municipality, Vereniging Eigen Huis, Netherlands Enterprise Agency, Midpoint Brabant, and Heijmans join forces to accelerate the energy transition in the region. What stands out in this academic workshop is that not only technological but especially social innovation in the context of the energy transition is highlighted. MNEXT is a crucial partner in this collaboration due to the contributions of the Smart Energy research group, the education portfolio on energy transition, and the SEnD Lab. The connection with the Smart Energy research group provides a practical, technically substantive boost to the university.

A new border region project that will recruit, train, retrain and upskill young people and adults for professions to enable energy transition has started. For the next three years, Avans University of Applied Sciences will be the secretary of the Energy(k) Education project, which is being implemented from the Interreg programme Flanders Netherlands with a grant from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). In the project, 18 educational institutions, governments, a regional career fund, a regional intermediary and a business organisation from the south of the Netherlands and Flanders are working together. The project came about last year through intensive cooperation between the project partners and Promint project management and has a size of €4,200,000.

In a unique partnership between the Smart Energy research group, Avans students and water board Brabantse Delta, innovative research is being carried out. The aim is to save energy, better balance the electricity and sewerage networks, optimise processes and gather knowledge. The students, coming from different disciplines, actively cooperate with enthusiastic supervisors from the water board and under the guidance of Jobert Ludlage. He is a lecturer-researcher within the Smart Energy research group and watches how the students devise and implement new solutions. This collaboration offers valuable benefits and insights to the students, the research group and the water board.

A new group of RWE employees successfully completed the Smart Energy lab training at Avans Hogeschool . They now have even more knowledge of the behaviour of our electricity system during the energy transition. Indeed, Lucas-Nülle Training Systems provides a clear picture of the contribution of solar and wind to our electricity supply and the effect of further electrification. Now that's some knowledge you can use if you want to accelerate the energytransition right now!

Students from different educational levels (VMBO, MBO, HBO) and researchers from the Smart Energy lectorate at Avans University of Applied Sciences are building a SolarTuk together. The students are so enthusiastic about the project that at the end of the day they often don't even want to go home. How great is that!