This morning we drove 45 minutes to Kristiansand, Norway to first visit Eltek Valere, a company that provides energy conversion solutions to help customers reduce energy consumption. Their focus is on renewable energy, electric vehicles, telecom, and industrial applications.
Our second company visit was at Elkem Solar, a company that produces high purity silicon. We were first given an overview of their company, then they fed us lunch, and finally we went on a tour of the plant. During the plant tour, we saw their silicon furnace which is 2000°C in order to react quartz and carbon materials to produce silicon.
Our third company visit was at Agder Energi, a company that produces, distributes, and sells energy. Here we learned more about Norway's hydro-electric power.
We learned that 99% of Norway's electricity production is hydropower and that Norway is able to distribute some of its power to other European nations.
We got back to our dorm rooms at 4:30 pm and then we all went and bought hot dogs and ice cream for dinner. We are looking forward to learning more about energy during a day-long seminar at the University of Agder tomorrow.
