5 posts tagged with "Energy"

The Investimenti Sostenibili 4.0 grant, opening on 6 October 2026, funds up to 75% of eligible costs for southern Italian SMEs (35% non-repayable grant and 40% zero-interest loan) for projects that combine Industry 4.0 technologies with at least a 5% annual energy saving. Because 4.0-enabling technologies must be preponderant (over 50% of eligible costs) and the saving must be documented, the IoT layer of sensors, gateways, cloud and analytics is the core of the application.

The Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) is the open standard, introduced in 2009 by the Open Charge Alliance, that lets EV charging stations and central management systems (CSMS) communicate regardless of manufacturer. It uses an asynchronous request/response model over WebSocket, supports smart charging and offline operation, and is today the de facto standard in Europe and North America, with OCPP 1.6 the most widely deployed version and 2.0.1 the latest.

In Istanbul, ENLIL's vertical wind turbines placed next to the roads turn the breeze produced by passing traffic into clean energy: a single turbine topped with a solar panel can produce enough electricity to power two Turkish households for a day. The turbines also carry IoT sensors that track temperature, humidity, carbon footprint and earthquake activity, and pass the data on to the city's authorities and environmental scientists.

Electric vehicles offer zero tailpipe emissions, more energy-efficient motors, lower fuel and maintenance costs, less dependence on fossil fuels and regenerative braking. Their main drawbacks are a shorter driving range, limited charging infrastructure in some areas, longer charging times, higher upfront costs and battery degradation over time.

The main alternatives to fossil fuels are electric vehicles, biofuels and hydrogen fuel cells, each needing its own infrastructure and technology to spread. Petroleum, coal and natural gas remain widely used, and their impact can be reduced with fuel efficiency standards, hybrid vehicles, carbon capture and storage, renewable natural gas and a shift to clean energy.