HPC techniques have the power to improve and reform many industrial sectors. When the Mexican government and the European Union (EU) decided to collaborate to improve their energy industries, it was an opportunity for EU high-performance computing (HPC) researchers to team up with Mexican colleagues. The aim? To provide solutions for the oil and gas industry, improve wind energy performance and solve issues of combustion efficiency for transportation systems.

Recently launched in Barcelona, ENERXICO, a new project jointly funded by the European Union and the government of Mexico, brings together 15 institutions in an academic-industry collaboration to solve such real-world engineering problems. Coordinated by Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) in Europe and the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Nucleares (ININ) in Mexico, it will focus on scaling applications in wind energy, oil/gas exploration, reservoir modelling, and biofuels for transportation. In parallel, to power these applications, the project will work on achieving scalable, energy-efficient simulations for the upcoming Exascale era.

Drawing from the knowledge and experience of BSC-coordinated Center of Excellence for Exascale in Solid Earth (ChEESE) in geophysical software development and modelling, the ENERXICO partners from BSC will lead the research on developing dynamic techniques that can be used for downscaling to micro-scale wind simulations and forecasts. Meanwhile, the Performance Optimisation and Productivity (POP) Center of Excellence, which is also coordinated by BSC, will evaluate code performance and make recommendations to ensure the optimisation and efficiency of codes. Some of the Center´s results in this project will also be used inside REPSOL and IBERDROLA simulation platforms.

“BSC is uniquely positioned to coordinate the ENERXICO project not only because of our access to the MareNostrum supercomputer and the PRACE infrastructure, but also because of our expertise in developing Exascale-compatible software,” commented José María Cela. “In this project, we aim to deliver tangible solutions for real-life industrial problems, while strengthening our collaboration with Mexico and getting Exascale-ready HPC simulations.”