The life time of a hydro power plant spans more than 40 years, thereafter usually an overhaul takes place to ensure additional 40 years of operation. Comparing this time cycle of operation with the development of IT and one realise that the level of digitalisation on our oldest assets will be very low. In order to overcome this slow pace and enable all benefits from modern digital developments we decided upon a one year long Proof of Concept (PoC) called IoT for Vattenfall Hydro.

The goals of the PoC were several, but the central part was to build and test a secondary network which would enable testing of (I)IoT based sensors on an existing older hydropower unit. We aimed to test several types of IoT sensors and gateways within our secondary network and at the same time prove the concept and value of using IoT based techniques one mature assets.