PowerLab builds the models, planning tools and analyses behind energy systems that run entirely on renewables. Our work shaped the Smart Energy Systems framework now referenced in EU policy.
PowerLab is the Smart Energy Systems Laboratory at the University of Zagreb's Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture (FSB), within the Department of Energy, Power Engineering and Environment. It develops simulation models, planning tools and techno-economic analyses for energy systems built entirely on renewables, integrating electricity, heating, cooling, transport and industry rather than treating them in isolation.
Working with Aalborg University, the lab co-developed the Smart Energy Systems framework, now embedded in Croatia's National Energy Plan and referenced in European Commission strategy documents. Today it runs over €4M in active EU-funded projects and collaborates with industry, public authorities, universities and research consortia across more than 20 countries.
We build the models, tools and evidence that make fully renewable energy systems possible to plan, and we train the engineers who will put them into practice.
Energy planners, modellers, combustion and CFD engineers, GIS specialists and doctoral researchers, working side by side on the same projects. Most of our research is done in teams that cut across these fields.
A computer classroom at FSB becomes the starting point for what will become Croatia's leading energy systems research lab. First students, first models, first questions about 100% renewable futures.
Working with Aalborg University on the 4DH project, the lab co-develops the Smart Energy Systems framework: the insight that electricity, heating and transport must be decarbonised together. A concept now cited in EU policy documents worldwide.
The lab's in-house planning tool H2RES is adopted by partner groups in Denmark, Portugal, Ireland and Southeast Asia. It becomes a reference tool for 100% renewable island and regional energy planning.
On 21 February 2024, the Faculty Council of FSB formally establishes the Smart Energy Systems Laboratory.
Conferences, awards, field work and everyday research. A look at the people behind the projects.
H2RES is an open-source energy systems model developed at the laboratory for planning and analysing integrated, sector-coupled energy transitions. It links electricity, heating, hydrogen and transport in a single framework, so a scenario can be built, run and compared end to end.
The model started as a tool for planning fully renewable island energy systems and was the first model used in a peer-reviewed study of a 100% renewable energy system. Over two decades it grew into a framework for whole regions and countries, and is now developed together with Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technologies in Skopje.
Alongside H2RES runs one of the most capable computational and experimental environments at any Croatian university.