In recent decades, there has been a sharp slowdown in investment in the hydropower sector due to a number of factors, including the lack of political decisions on the methods for renewing concessions, which has led operators to minimize medium- and long-term rehabilitation work, except for that which is essential to guarantee the required levels of safety. All this is already having a serious impact on employment and related industries. Given the age of the national hydropower assets, which are increasingly in need of rehabilitation to ensure their safety in the medium to long term, there is now an awareness that, if this situation is not resolved, there will be possible outages or severe limitations in the capacity of large plants. In the current energy context, this loss would be a real problem for Italy, as the hydropower sector is providing an increasingly essential service in balancing the grid, thanks to its storage capacity and flexible generation.

National and international associations are promoting actions to raise awareness among institutions on these issues and to identify research and innovation priorities in the field of hydropower. RSE is actively involved in these initiatives with the aim of disseminating the results of systems research and tailoring its studies to the needs of operators and institutions themselves.

The report describes the technical and dissemination activities carried out by RSE in 2019 for the European project HYDROPOWER-EUROPE and for the ICOLD (International Commission on Large Dams) and ITCOLD (Italian Commission on Large Dams) committees. The European project aims to identify research and development priorities for the hydropower sector, ranging from technological to environmental, social and economic aspects. In terms of collaboration with ICOLD and ITCOLD, RSE contributed to the organization of international and national events to publicize the technical-scientific activities carried out during the year: the 15th ICOLD International Benchmark Workshop on Numerical Analysis of Dams, the ITCOLD Study Day on Penstocks and the ‘Dighe e Territorio’ (Dams and the Territory) event on public acceptance of hydropower infrastructures, held in Palermo. In addition to operators in the sector, institutions and universities participated in these events.