Renewable energy sources (RES) forecasting services are divided into two types: Forecast-as-a-Service (FaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). The FaaS was adopted by most of the forecast service vendors (Energy & Meteo Systems, Meteologica, Vaisala, WEPROG, etc.) that provide on-demand customer-defined forecasting services supported by a cloud-based framework or a web-service API: the client either receives numerical weather predictions (NWP) or exchanges power data for RES power forecasts of different types (from single to aggregated power plants). Less common are business models based on SaaS where the client purchases a forecasting software license, as is the case of AleaSoft in Spain.

Presently…

The pathway towards decarbonisation in Europe requires a dramatic increase in Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) production in the upcoming years. In order to achieve a reduction of 80–95% in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the European Union (EU) expects that Renewable Energy Sources (RES) hold a share around 97% of the European power generation mix, considering the high RES scenario envisioned for the decarbonisation trend.

To succeed in such an important endeavour, a deep transformation of the EU Electric Power System (EPS) is taking place by massively integrating non-dispatchable RES, such as wind and solar photovoltaics, wide deployment of high-energy…

Low-code development platforms (LCDPs) address the need for increased productivity in software development. There is still, however, a considerable number of relevant gaps in current knowledge about how people reason during programming and development tasks, as well as a need for new tools to fill these gaps.

Low-code development platforms (LCDPs) address the need for increased productivity in software development. By raising the abstraction level at which software is developed, LCDPs automate low-level and routine development tasks, effectively contributing to solve the problem of global shortage of professional software developers. According to MarketsandMarkets (2020), the Global LCDPs market is projected to grow from €11,2 billion in 2020 to €38,8 billion by 2025. At the same time, they lower the entry barrier to software development. As these low-level tasks become automated, developers are not required to carry them out (or even to know how to carry them out)…

Explain or perish!

Every day, each person generates an enormous quantity and diversity of data, which, allied to an increase of the available computational power and to the democratisation of the access to the data itself, created the ideal conditions for the generalised use of machine learning models applied to several contexts and areas (e.g., law, finance, healthcare, commerce, politics, biometrics and multimedia). Moreover, while the first generation of machine learning algorithms required some prior knowledge on data process and feature engineering and was used to solve easy tasks, the current trend focuses more on solving harder tasks, using multi data sources and…

This post is not about physics but, in a way, it is related to the elusive dark matter:

“Dark matter is material that cannot be seen directly. We know that dark matter exists because of the effect it has on objects that we can observe directly.”

Likewise, this text is about the inference of the larger number of active COVID-19 cases by using the information on official numbers of detected cases and mortality data. …

Shared mobility can be defined as transportation services that are shared among users. During the last years, there has been a significant rise of shared mobility modes, including carsharing, ride-hailing, and micro-mobility services like scooter sharing and bike-sharing. Among these modes, carsharing represents a unique way of transportation since it provides a private, flexible and convenient mode of transportation for short periods (by the hour or minute), which may make this mode of transportation attractive for short-distance daily-needs trips. …

For the second year INESC TEC’s Centre for Robotics and Autonomous Systems (CRAS) will organise the IN THE BLACK meeting, with the support of TEC4SEA Research Infrastructure [+info: www.inesctec.pt/en/innovation/tec4sea#intro ] and EIT (European Institute of Innovation and Technology) Raw Materials [+ info: eitrawmaterials.eu].

The “Portugal is Sea” map shows the project for the extension of the Portuguese Continental Shelf and there is definitely a considerable area to be explored.

The exploitation of mineral resources on deep-ocean beds, including those in the surrounding area of sensitive-rich habitats such as hydrothermal vents, is rapidly emerging as a credible alternative. However, the scale…

Artificial intelligence (AI) is emerging as a disruptive technology in the energy sector and raising the attention of different stakeholders, such as electric system operators, energy retailers, energy services companies, consumers, etc. The main motivations are:

(a) The electrical grid operation is becoming more complex due to the higher number of actors and services, that range from new technologies and decentralized power generation and electrical storage to new market frameworks, players and services. The current electric system was not designed to accommodate diversified and distributed energy sources, particularly renewable ones characterized by their variable behavior. …