Turbine passage study for fish in Sweden

This project's goal is to investigate potential impacts on fish from turbine passage. The project will conduct field studies with Barotrauma Detection Sensors (BDS) to characterize the turbine passage conditions for fish at two selected hydropower plants (HPPs) in Sweden, at Lanforsen HPP on Dälelven for salmon and trout and at Ätrafors HPP on River Ätran for eel. The field study data will be compared with already conducted modelling approaches (modelling of turbine mortalities and telemetry data). 

The work focuses first on a feasibility study at the selected sites starting with using dummy instruments to evaluate the recovery rate of instruments and the physical impacts from the turbine blades. This data will be used to plan a specific number of deployments to acquire a statistically representative dataset using smart instruments to (i) analyse the pressure conditions for fish during turbine passage, and (ii) analyse the physical impact of the turbine blades (via smart and dummy instruments). Next, processed data will be evaluated in the light of target fish species.