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Decentralized energy production offers an increased share of renewable energy and autonomy compared to the conventional, grid-only solution. However, under the net-metering scheme, the energy losses in batteries translate into financial losses to an investor seeking to move away from grid-only electricity and set up a residential PV+Battery microgrid. Our paper examines a hypothetical support scheme for such a project, designed to balance the economic disadvantage through partially supporting the acquisition of batteries, and thus ensure that the microgrid solution is more attractive than no investment. For this we develop four case studies based on experiments carried out in Greece, Italy, Denmark and Finland. Using the minimization of the Net Present Cost for each project, we compare the PV+Battery solution to the grid-only scenario over 25 years, for a range of electricity prices. The results illustrate first how the success of this project depends on the price of electricity. Second, we find that under current conditions in the respective countries the need for battery support varies between zero in Denmark and 86% in Italy, which reflects how the disadvantages of net metering can only be counterbalanced by either very high electricity price or very high solar resource. Our paper contributes thus to the discussion about the favourable environment for batteries in residential microgrids.

While a possible nuclear phase-out for the Belgian energy system has long been the subject of both political and societal debate, prevailing government policy at the beginning of 2021 is to enact a full nuclear phase-out by 2025. While the Belgian government is committed to the phase-out, an evaluation moment is foreseen by the end of 2021, where the final decision on the prospective nuclear phase-out will be made. This is the backdrop against which this paper uses a dispatching model, based on the urbs modelling framework, to estimate possible post-phase-out Belgian energy mixes. The obtained results show an increased reliance on gas-fired plants, or, if CO2 emissions are constrained to pre-phase-out levels, a marked increase in the amount of imported electricity and a fivefold increase in needed installed storage capacity. Total system costs increase as well, due to the additional storage required to allow for the increased penetration of renewable energy sources. These results show that there are important trade-offs between CO2 emissions reductions, energy independence and energy system costs which will have to be navigated after the Belgian nuclear phase-out. Although not a priori part of the scope of the research, the results highlight several signicant vectors for increased blackout risk, such as constrained electricity imports, the failure to realise the needed storage capacity explosion or transmission grid failures.

The influx of whole genome sequencing (WGS) data in the public health and clinical diagnostic sectors has created a need for data analysis methods and bioinformatics expertise, which can be a bottleneck for many laboratories. At Sciensano, the Belgian national public health institute, an intuitive and user-friendly bioinformatics tool portal was implemented using Galaxy, an open-source platform for data analysis and workflow creation. The Galaxy @Sciensano instance is available to both internal and external scientists and offers a wide range of tools provided by the community, complemented by over 50 custom tools and pipelines developed in-house. The tool selection is currently focused primarily on the analysis of WGS data generated using Illumina sequencing for microbial pathogen typing, characterization and outbreak detection, but it also addresses specific use cases for other data types. Our Galaxy instance includes several custom-developed 'push-button' pipelines, which are user-friendly and intuitive stand-alone tools that perform complete characterization of bacterial isolates based on WGS data and generate interactive HTML output reports with key findings. These pipelines include quality control, de novo assembly, sequence typing, antimicrobial resistance prediction and several relevant species-specific assays. They are tailored for pathogens with active genomic surveillance programs, and clinical relevance, such as Escherichia coli , Listeria monocytogenes , Salmonella spp. and Mycobacterium tuberculosis . These tools and pipelines utilize internationally recognized databases such as PubMLST, EnteroBase, and the NCBI National Database of Antibiotic Resistant Organisms, which are automatically synchronized on a regular basis to ensure up-to-date results. Many of these pipelines are part of the routine activities of Belgian national reference centers and laboratories, some of which use them under ISO accreditation. This resource is publicly available for noncommercial use at https://galaxy.sciensano.be/ and can help other laboratories establish reliable, traceable and reproducible bioinformatics analyses for pathogens encountered in public health settings.

Paul E. Jr. We mourn the passing of our Life Trustee, friend, and advisor, Paul Edward Taylor, Jr. Mr. Taylor was a member of our hospital's Board of Trustees since 1992. and served as Chairman in the early 1990s.