Hydro Power
The hydropower sector plays a crucial role in delivering the EU’s climate, environmental and security of supply goals and supporting the transition to more green energy in Europe. In this context, hydropower, with its low CO2 footprint, not only provides significant amounts of electricity for both base and peak load but also offers a range of diverse ancillary services for the energy sector. Hydro power thus remains an indispensable renewable energy that must be promoted as part of an ambitious energy security and climate policy.
Currently, hydropower is caught between economic efficiency on the one hand and nature conservation on the other and faces technical and operational challenges in connection with digitalisation in particular. All these aspects require a high degree of know-how, which is offered by vgbe energy and its network of experts.
Within our vgbe hydropower community, experience and knowledge have been shared at a high professional level in various vgbe hydro power committees for decades. There are more than 250 experts from operating companies, manufacturers, suppliers and consultants are actively cooperating in the vgbe’s hydropower committees.
vgbe energy facilitates communication and expert exchange on its network platform for all issues relating to technology, operation and plant safety of energy generation plants, such as flexibilisation, digitalisation or IT security. In addition, the long-standing close cooperation with Eurelectric allows us to work together on strategic issues at the EU level. Thus, the vgbe’s activities focus on short-term and practice-oriented as well as long-term and strategically oriented topics.
Activities
- Improvement of availability and reliability of energy
- Concepts for operation and maintenance
- Ecological issues
- Applications in digitalisation
- Measures for operational IT/OT security
- Recommendations for Health & Safety
- Creation of technical, practice-oriented standards
The vgbe-Standards reflect the state of the art for the generation and storage of electricity and heat. They are developed in close cooperation with operators and manufacturers.
Areas of application are:
- Layout, design and planning
- Purchasing and manufacturing
- Construction and commissioning
- Operation and maintenance
- Dismantling and recycling
For ordinary vgbe members, the subscription to the vgbe-Standards in electronic form (ebook) is included in the membership fee. Affiliated and sponsoring vgbe members receive the vgbe-Standards at reduced rates.
To support our members, we develop and operate various databases. These form the basis for improving safety standards in the energy industry and for conducting benchmarks.
To meet new challenges, vgbe energy offers collaborative research activities in which operators as well as manufacturers, universities, research institutes and the public sector pool their specific know-how and financial resources. This includes initiating and coordinating national and international research projects, building up know-how and knowledge transfer, and saving costs through joint research projects.
We are currently involved in the following research projects:
- HORIZON EUROPE ETIP Hydropower Europe
- FFG RELY
- HORIZON EUROPE ReHydro
- HORIZON EUROPE STOR-HY
General Presentation
The Technical Competence Center Hydro Power at vgbe energy is Europe’s leading platform and representative for hydropower operators, manufacturers and suppliers with a focus on techno-economic and ecological aspects for operation and maintenance as well as application-oriented research.
Get an overview about our activities!
Technical programmes
vgbe energy with its leading role in understanding good and best practices in the operation of hydropower plants is launching with cooperation of its members various Technical Programmes. These programmes are part of the comprehensive activities of vgbe energy for the hydro power sector to support daily operation routines, maintenance and plant optimisation as well as techno-economic, environmental and strategic challenges. Therefore, the programmes are open to both vgbe members and vgbe non-members.
Cost comparison for run-of-river power plants
Time frame: ongoing
Cost comparison can help operators of power plants (such as hydro power operators) to maintain their competitiveness by not just relying on growth options, but through the permanent improvement of their efficiency, which can be achieved primarily through optimisation.
Cost comparison for run-of-river power plants is based on a proven and unique methodology which assures an objective and best-in-class benchmarking of all O&M cost components taking into account the vast variety of such plants and their specifications. The objective of this cost comparison methodology is solely to establish a comparable basis for O&M cost performance and is designed to systematically analyze the complex relation of O&M cost types, cost drivers and resulting cost performance. The profitability of individual run-of-river plants is explicitly not taken into account in the analysis.
Publications
Our hydropower network produces a range of publications on hydropower’s role, new trends and developments in the sector. You can browse available publications below.
If you are interested in publishing your publication, send us an email with a link to the publication and your abstract.
Hydropower Industry Guide 2022/23
The third edition of our Hydropower Industry Guide 2022/23 contains articles on research projects and numerous references to innovative hydropower products, solutions and services. We hope you enjoy reading it and that you will derive the greatest possible benefit from it for your activities.
We hope you enjoy reading it and that you will derive the greatest possible benefit from it for your activities.
Hydropower Europe: Strategic Industry Roadmap (SIR)
The HYDROPOWER-EUROPE Forum was established to map the innovation needs of hydropower in a Research and Innovation Agenda (RIA) and to set out the challenges in a Strategic Industry Roadmap (SIR).
The desire to decarbonise Europe’s energy is also a unique opportunity for hydropower to reposition itself and highlight its technological advantages for the energy supply of the future.
Hydropower Europe: Research and Innovation Agenda (RIA)
As part of the HORIZON 2020 research project, 18 research topics were formulated on the basis of a comprehensive consultation process, each with several sub-topics, which were prioritised by an international panel of experts with regard to their immediate need for in-depth investigation.
vgbe-Interpretation Note | EU Taxonomy & Hydropower: Criteria on Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation
Interpretation Note of vgbe energy | Hydro Power on Hydropower & the EU Taxonomy Climate Delegated Act as a step to provide guidance for the application of the EU Taxonomy for the hydropower sector.
Synthesis Paper for the Fish Protection and Fish Migration Forum: Comments, clarifications and additions from the perspective of large hydropower operators
This Synthesis Paper is an in-depth response from the perspective of large hydropower operators to the Fish Protection and Fish Migration Forum prepared jointly by vgbe energy and AGAW. This joint document addresses decision-makers in politics, administration, the energy industry and associations and provides clear positions, highlights the need for action and research, and provides initial approaches to solving challenges. This document is only available in German.
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Our team
Dr Mario Bachhiesl
Head of Renewables and Distributed Generation, Health and Safety
Jens Paluszkiewicz
Assistant Hydropower
Carina Belusa
Marketing and Communication
for research projects