Digital twins | Digital twins rising Digital twin technology is swiftly transforming the hydropower sector: from real-time
monitoring and predictive maintenance at ageing plants, to full-scale water-management simulations used in flood and drought planning. New deployments in Norway, the US and China showcase how virtual replicas of dams, turbines and water infrastructure are helping operators boost efficiency, manage risk and prepare for climate-driven surprises.
Above: Digital twin technology is increasingly being used to modernise hydropower plants and improve water-management systems worldwide. Image: Photon photo/
Shutterstock.com
THE NOTION OF A DIGITAL TWIN is no longer confined to aerospace, manufacturing or smart factories. In hydropower, digital twins are emerging as a key tool for modernising ageing assets, optimising energy production, improving maintenance, and even supporting environmental and water-management planning. At its core, a digital twin couples detailed engineering models of a hydropower facility with real- time data from sensors. That virtual counterpart then tracks actual operation, highlights deviations, predicts failures, or even simulates alternative operating scenarios without touching the real facility. Such capabilities are becoming especially valuable given the age of many hydropower fleets. In the US, the average hydropower plant is over 60 years old. Digital twins offer a cost-effective way to modernise those assets, often without major modifications to physical infrastructure.
Early adoption: success stories
from Norway and the US One of the most recent milestones in European hydropower digitalisation comes from the ReHydro project, an EU-funded initiative involving utilities, researchers and industry partners. In April 2025, ReHydro announced the launch of a real-time “Virtual Powerplant” for Røldal-Suldal Kraftverkene in Norway. The system comprises two parallel digital twins: one mirrors the plant’s real-time performance (tracking flow, head loss, overall efficiency), while the other allows operators to run “what-if” simulations – for example, preparing staff for emergency scenarios without risking real-world systems. Importantly, ReHydro’s implementation relies on a cloud-based data architecture using an Azure database rather than traditional industrial I/O protocols. The system collects data from many datapoints across
16 | January 2026 |
www.waterpowermagazine.com
the hydropower complex, offering a rich, plant-wide perspective. Latency is reportedly kept to a manageable 15–60 seconds – a trade-off for the broad flexibility cloud- based infrastructure provides. Across the Atlantic, the Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory (PNNL) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have also developed custom digital twins for hydropower facilities, with promising results. In projects such as Alder Dam (Washington state) and Rocky Reach Dam, operators now use physics-informed neural networks trained on real operational data to monitor performance, simulate scenarios, and help plan maintenance, all via web-accessible dashboards. Key benefits have already been recorded: high-
resolution, real-time monitoring; early detection of deviations and potential failures; predictive maintenance that can reduce unplanned outages; and capacity to simulate alternative operating strategies before implementing changes.
From hydropower to watersheds While hydropower has embraced digital twins at the
plant level, other sectors are applying the same concept to larger systems, such as watersheds, rivers, and national water-resource networks. In China, for example, the government is integrating digital twin technology into its water governance and conservancy infrastructure. According to a 2024 report by Swissnex in China, China has launched dozens of pilot digital twin programmes across reservoirs, river basins, flood defenses, and irrigation systems. These virtual water systems integrate data from hydrological stations, precipitation sensors, satellites, radars and more, creating a real-time, dynamic “digital twin” of the water network’s state. By 2025, the plan is to have a comprehensive,
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