STOR-HY - innovative Storage Technology and OpeRations in Hydropower

Electricity grids across Europe are becoming increasingly complex. The growing share of wind and solar energy, both non-programmable by nature, is creating greater need for flexible, dispatchable generation that can respond rapidly to shifts in supply and demand. Pumped storage hydropower (PSP) is well positioned to meet this need, offering large-scale energy storage, fast response capability, and the ability to act flexibly as generator, consumer, and grid stabiliser. However, fulfilling this role requires PSP plants to operate across a wider range of conditions than they were originally designed for, including frequent start-stops and fast mode changes. Besides, many of these facilities are also aging, adding further pressure on asset reliability and maintenance costs. STOR-HY, a Horizon Europe innovation project is working to address these challenges.

STOR-HY, coordinated by Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC), brings together 21 organisations across eight European countries, including utilities, manufacturers, research institutions, and engineering firms, to develop and validate innovative technologies at six demonstration sites in France, Portugal, and Spain. The work spans advanced condition monitoring, digitalization, hybrid energy integration, and sustainability assessment, advancing key solutions from TRL 5-6 toward real-world validated TRL 7-8 by the project's end.

NORCE contributes to STOR-HY across three interconnected areas, spanning the technical and societal dimensions of the project.

Condition Monitoring and IoT Sensing

NORCE works alongside UPC, Andritz Hydro, and EDF on advanced condition monitoring strategies for PSP equipment. The work focuses on developing an IoT-based edge computing sensing solution that can generate condition indicators directly at the sensor level, reducing the need to transmit high-resolution raw data and instead delivering meaningful, compact health signals to the cloud. At the Le Cheylas demonstrator in France, NORCE is deploying sensors on metallic pressure vessels holding compressed air and the main inlet valve, to track structural degradation and leaks. These measurements feed into data fusion algorithms, where signals from multiple sources, including acoustic emission and vibration data, are combined to detect wear and tear and assess equipment degradation. The condition indicators feed directly into predictive maintenance algorithms, enabling data-driven decisions on when and how to intervene before failures occur.

CADS - Cyber-Physical Clone for Advanced Decision Support

NORCE leads the development of CADS, the central integrating platform of the STOR-HY project. CADS is a cyber-physical decision support system that brings together sub-models, sensor streams, condition indicators, and operational data into a unified near real-time environment for PSP operators. By combining physics-based and data-driven models, CADS functions as a digital twin of the PSP, designed to support informed decisions on predictive maintenance scheduling, operational strategy, and equipment health monitoring across all six demonstrators. The platform is built on OVH Cloud, a European sovereign cloud infrastructure, ensuring that sensitive operational data from energy assets remains within European jurisdiction, which is an important consideration for critical infrastructure. CADS is being developed in close collaboration with KAIZEN to provide a demonstration platform for STOR-HY technologies that are expected to bring about a 25% reduction in operational costs through STOR-HY’s advanced PSP digitalization solutions and predictive analytics.

Social Acceptance

NORCE also leads the social acceptance work within STOR-HY. This includes defining the societal dimension to be used in the project’s assessment framework, the STOR-HY matrix, which captures how PSP technologies interact with local communities through effects such as flood control, tourism, water use, and employment. NORCE leads the task that examines public attitudes toward hydropower innovations, evaluates trust and safety perceptions, analyses employment effects, and works toward establishing a structured pathway for a Social License to Operate. This work ensures that the technological innovations developed in the project are assessed not only for technical performance but also for their social acceptance and long-term viability within the communities where they are deployed.