This morning we left our beachside condos and headed out to Dead Man's Dune. We saw the beach where 1,400 English sailors crashed and were buried in the sands by the Danes. On the beach, we also looked for amber, but to no avail.
After going to the beach, we bussed over to the sustainable energy folk high school to learn about some of the different ways people have been working on creating sustainable energy. The folkecenter had a huge collection of solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars, and other sustainable solutions. Our guide took us through a warehouse where we were able to see the evolution of the turbines from small, wooden-bladed machines to enormous, sophisticated pieces of technology capable of producing multiple megawatts of power.
In addition to energy production methods, we looked at ways to store and conserve power. Because wind and solar energy aren't reliably consistent, it is important to store the energy produced. One such was was to electrolyze water into hydrogen and oxygen gas for use in a hydrogen fuel cell. Another way to store this energy was to heat up water to be used throughout the day.
Equally important for sustainability is reducing energy usage. We ended our time at the folkecenter by looking at several houses made sustainably with straw to be as energy efficient as possible, which was achieved with heavy insulation and conservative temperature control.
After the folkecenter, we got back on the bus and headed to our new hostel for the last couple of days in Jutland.
-Joshua W.
