At the very first application of Virtual River (VR 1.0), all data were exchanged via the hardware interface (galvanic interface), that was developed by SCIETEC in 2002.

This interface used discharges of 4-20 mA for analogue values  and 0/48 Volt for binary digital signals (e.g. status messages).

The Virtual River system was applied for implementing and testing the control units which were replaced when the entire SCADA-system of the HPP Rheinau (CH) was updated.