Today, June 2nd, we started our day bright and early with a short walk up the hill to the technical college. There we met Professor Underling, he is a professor in Electrical Engineering who worked at the University of Minnesota with Professor Imbertson and originally suggested that he take student to Scandinavia to learn about energy. He brought us inside to a lecture room and we had several people talk to us about varying subjects in energy. The first person was Per Ivan Karstad, he is a Phd student that works for the oil company. He spoke to us about what Norway should do after it runs out of oil, he said they should invest more of its carbon tax money into renewable energy because that would give a bigger impact than just capturing the carbon and would be economically good for Norway. Next Prof. Robert Nilssen talked to us about generators for ocean based wind power. He showed us developments that they had been working on in making the turbine more compact. After that we heard G. Doorman talk to us about hydro power in Norway. All of Norway's electricity is generated by hydro-electricity and he talked about how they calculate how much water they allow through each plant on a given day because the reservoirs are at different levels depending on the season. He also talked about how they calculate the price for the electricity on a given day. Last but certainly not least Per Morten Aunemo from the Leirfossen Power Plant talked to us about the plant that we were going to see later in the day. It was originally built in 1901 and just recently they built a new one to take over.
Next we ate lunch in the Cafeteria, we were able to talk to some of the students and the speakers while we ate.
After lunch we hopped on a buss over to the power plant. They built the power plant inside the mountain and the water they pull from the reservoir travels through the mountain under several homes to get to the generators. We were able to get up close, and I mean really close to the different parts of the operating turbine system. Once we finished that we still had some time left so we were brought over to the original power plant that was still standing next to the river and we looked around in there. The building did not look like a power plant it almost looked a little bit like an old church with glass panel windows and large wooden doors decorated in iron. When we entered, the ceiling had wood panels, there was a design painted on the wall, there were large arches, and decorative iron work lined a stair case. To our surprise they still had one of the five old turbines running.
We then came back to the hotel and some people went to play soccer, others shopped in the rain, and some people had a hankering for more waffles.
Our model showing off the safety gear.
Below the surface is the francis turbine and above is the generator.
Looking into the generator.
This is in the old hydro plant.
