Digital solutions for improving the sustainability performance and FLEXibility potential of HYDROpower assets
The D-HYDROFLEX project aims to improve the efficiency, flexibility and sustainability of existing hydropower plants through advanced digital technologies. The project develops a Hydropower 4.0 toolkit that combines sensors, digital twins, artificial intelligence, cloud-edge computing and other digital solutions to support better operational planning, predictive maintenance, real-time monitoring and cybersecurity.
The toolkit is designed to help hydropower operators optimise plant performance, respond to changing energy demands and improve their participation in electricity markets. D-HYDROFLEX also addresses environmental sustainability and explores how hydropower can work alongside other energy technologies, including hydrogen production and energy storage. The project's solutions are being validated in operational hydropower plants across five European countries: Spain, France, Poland, Romania and Greece.
MetaMind Innovations (MINDS) contributes to the D-HYDROFLEX project by developing cybersecurity solutions and supporting the integration of digital technologies for hydropower plants. A key contribution is HYDRO-FBOX, an AI-based intrusion detection solution designed to identify cyber threats and unusual network activity. It uses federated learning to improve threat detection across different sites without requiring them to share sensitive operational data.
MINDS also develops and manages HYDRO-BUS, the project’s central infrastructure for secure data exchange between different system components. In addition, the company hosts the project’s cloud environment and supports the integration of cybersecurity monitoring with the Monitoring and Diagnostics platform. Through these activities, MINDS helps improve the security, connectivity and reliability of the D-HYDROFLEX toolkit and supports its testing in real hydropower environments.
