Energy: Innovative supercomputers solutions to advance renewables and fusion

Boosting performance of photovoltaic, hydroelectric, wind and in the future nuclear fusion energy sources with new generation supercomputers capable of solving one trillion operations per second ('exascale') is the objective of the three-year project EoCoE-III^[1], funded by the European Joint Undertaking for High Performance Computing (EuroHPC JU) which aims to make the European Union a world leader in supercomputing.  The project comprises IT and renewable energy experts from 18 public and private European organizations, including ENEA, the Cnr and Universities of Trento and Rome Tor Vergata for Italy.

The computing power of exascale supercomputers allows to develop applications capable of virtually and faithfully reproducing, on a real scale, natural phenomena of energy interest. “Supercomputing can perform simulations in sectors like fusion energy, materials, hydroelectric and wind power”, explained the project manager for ENEA Massimo Celino, researcher at the Division for the Development of Systems for IT and ICT. As regards fusion, the simulations support experiments on the ITER tokamak under construction in Cadarache, France. To optimize performance and minimize risks, each scenario will be validated numerically. “As concerns the materials sector, an application will be created to conduct simulations that could promote developments in the photovoltaics and sensorsistics sectors” said Celino.

As regards the production of hydroelectric energy, the models obtained with supercomputing enable us to obtain continuous spatio-temporal information and make predictions and projections on the performance, for example, of water basins. Compared to wind power, the simulations will be able to optimally clarify the dynamics of air flows in a wind farm. This type of analysis will make it possible to make wind energy cheaper and more widespread also by reducing energy losses which, in a power plant, are estimated at between 20% and 30% overall.