Hydropower plants that generate environmentally friendly electricity can be fatal for fish. There are already fish protection systems, that are, however, not sufficiently functional, so that fish that want to get in water below the plant often descend via the turbine of the hydroelectric plant. On the basis of the European Water Framework Directive, operators of hydropower plants must demonstrate that their plants are passable at least for fish. To demonstrate this, numerous animal experiments have to be conducted.

M. Sc. Stefan Hörner from the Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics and colleagues now want to develop electronic fish the replace experiments with real fish. To do this, they will first equip living fish with sensors to collect data. The information should then lead to the flow simulation program RETERO (Reduction of live fish testing trough science and technology). The project is supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research with 1.4 million.

Source:
https://www.uni-magdeburg.de/Universit%C3%A4t/Im+Portrait/Profilerungsschwerpunkte/Research+_+Transfer/PM+29_2019-p-75424.html
https://retero.org/