About the Project
The main objective of ReHydro is to demonstrate how European hydropower can be refurbished and modernized to be fit for the future energy system, respecting sustainability requirements and societal needs in a climate change context. ReHydro proposes new methods and tools that will allow to refurbish, upgrade and increase European hydropower capacity. Thanks to this progress beyond the state of the art of hydropower technology, ReHydro will introduce a new paradigm to boost European leadership and competitiveness in the hydropower industry and provide new sustainable solutions that are replicable at European and global levels.
Research and Innovation
ReHydro aims to enhance the impact of hydropower within the electrical grid by repairing, upgrading, and refurbishing hydropower plants.
More ...Project Objectives
The main objective of ReHydro is to demonstrate how European hydropower can be refurbished and modernized.
More ...Project Partners
The ReHydro project involves 22 partners from 7 European countries: Each of them brings their own unique expertise to the project.
More ...Demonstration Sites
The demonstration sites play a crucial role during the ReHydro project by serving as real-world test environments.
More ...Research and Innovation Focus
The ReHydro project aims to increase the importance of hydropower as a volatile energy source in the EU. As most of the existing hydropower plants were commissioned in the 1960s and 1980s, they no longer meet modern standards of sustainability, digitalisation and flexibility.
Over the course of the project, so-called demonstration sites will be upgraded, refurbished or retrofitted with modern technologies to test their impact on the set targets. ReHydro will focus on developing and testing a new turbine design that protects biodiversity, increases taxon richness and improves the suitability of aquatic habitats. This new design will also help to make hydropower plants more fish-friendly, with a focus on the European eel, a highly endangered and migratory species.
Project Objectives

Progressing beyond the state-of-the-art
Most of the European hydropower plants were built and optimized for power systems that have since changed, making them unflexible and unsustainable by modern standards.
ReHydro will use state-of-the-art technology as a starting point to improve on key technologies.

Decision support framework
Today, multi-criteria evaluation methods are in use and well-established in several sectors and industries as a tool to support decision-making. In hydropower refurbishment, this has not yet happened.
ReHydro will propose a framework for the use of multi-criteria decision-making methods based on sustainability indicators, including but not limited to previously neglected social aspects.

Advanced monitoring for sediment erosion
Currently, assessing turbine erosion requires physical access and costly tools, such as measuring devices and 3D scanning, halting hydropower plant operation during inspection.
ReHydro aims to simplify this by using computer vision to detect and measure damage, eliminating the need for shutdowns and enabling more frequent component checks, thus enhancing digitalization capabilities.

Digitalization tools
With the aid of a plant digitalization tool, the use of plant health information will support asset management, thereby reducing maintenance needs, plant outage time, and avoiding harmful operating conditions.
ReHydro will build on this foundation by demonstrating digitalization tools that will support smart decision-making for sustainable refurbishment of critical hydropower components by analysing and investigating additional sensor information.

Hybridization with batteries
Another achievement of the project will be the implementation of a control system for a hybrid hydropower plant equipped with a battery. This advancement enhances grid services and minimizes wear and tear, leading to lower maintenance costs.
ReHydro will continue to demonstrate the upgraded digital control of this technology by considering a multi-objective optimization that will make rivers more navigable.

Eel migration
While there have been past efforts to develop technologies that reliably reduce the risk hydropower plants pose to aquatic life, especially the European eel, no sufficient solution has been found for the retrofit of large Kaplan turbines.
ReHydro will develop and retrofit demonstration sites with an eel-friendly turbine design, the amount of which will cover several operating conditions, site specifics and retrofit configurations. A noticeable benefit to the eels is expected.

Multi market optimization tools
Today, there is no off-the-shelf hydropower scheduling tool capable of fully optimising uncertainty and operation in multiple markets. A prototype for calculating revenue streams from multiple markets has been tested in a laboratory setting on real data together with the industry.
ReHydro will add a multimarket methodology tool that has previously been tested in a laboratory setting to the commonly used stochastic hydropower scheduling tool ProdRisk.

eDNA metabarcoding
Environmental DNA (eDNA) is a non-invasive sampling method that assesses biodiversity by detecting the presence of a species through detection of their genetic material (DNA) in the environment.
In ReHydro, we will sample eDNA from water and substrate in a regulated river and aim to demonstrate the application of eDNA. We will also recommend guidelines for the development of a standard protocol for its use in verifying effects on biodiversity caused by refurbishment.

Advanced control for variable speed pumped storage retrofitting
In the future, advanced control for variable speed pumped storage retrofitting will be tested via simulations to show that joint control methods can increase flexibility in terms of operating range.
ReHydro will retrofit one of its demonstration sites with an advanced joint control system of variable speed pumped storage to further test and showcase the implementation.

Life-cycle assessment (LCA) and biodiversity footprint
As a well-established methodology, LCA already serves to evaluate environmental impacts on the whole life cycle of a product. However, it does not fully cover biodiversity issues as well as insights on the circularity of solutions.
ReHydro will be adding those missing indicators and specifically adapted to the refurbishment of hydropower plants.
Project Partners
Partners
Collaborations
Demonstration Sites
The project will use demonstration sites to implement and showcase innovative solutions within specific parts of each pillar, as well as inter-disciplinary work, to show how to combine and optimize different objectives to a common platform. This demonstration sites play a crucial role during the ReHydro project by serving as real-world test environments. Five existing hydropower plants will be outfitted with innovative solutions, applications and technologies that will be developed and improved on over the course of the project. This will allow for the collection of data on the refurbishments’ performance and impact in real time. In addition to the main demonstration sites, several other sites will be used to demonstrate how innovations and results can be upscaled to other sites.
As ReHydro aims to demonstrate the sustainable refurbishment of hydropower plants, monitoring the environmental implications of changes made throughout the project is a priority. Being able to see the impact on biodiversity and nature as a whole will allow for adaptive decision-making while the project is running, as well as lay the foundation for future research.
Ultimately, demonstration sites are the bridge between theoretical research and practical application to ensure the best results possible.
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