Wednesday, August 5th, 2015
Stephan: Norway and Iceland are the most fascinating countries in the world for me, particularly Norway. Each, in its own way has put its people first, and sought increased wellness as a society. This
It isn't just the specifics of this novel energy storage system that I find significant. It is that they think this way as a country, are already well into the transition out of carbon, and want to share and help others. Contrast this with the Republican attacks on Obama's carbon energy proposals. We are declining as a country and cannot seem to stop, because we simply will not talk about the real issues. There is only one successful solution to this and that is to create a society that makes wellness its first priority. The social outcome comparison between Norway and the U.S. makes the case as to which is the more successful, healthier, better educated, universally insured, cheaper, and more efficient model
Norway is a hydropower hoarder.
Its 937 hydroelectric-generating plants provide the country with 96 percent of its electricity—making it the world’s sixth-largest hydropower producer.
Now, researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology are figuring out how to spread the water power wealth to other nations by turning Norway into the “green battery pack” of Europe.
The idea is to find an effective way to store the increasing amount of power generated from Europe’s growing solar arrays and wind farms. Right now, countries such as Denmark are often left with excess power during windy days, so they push the surplus generated power into neighboring countries’ grids.
On days with little wind or sun, even those countries have to fire up coal and natural gas power plants to meet electricity demand. But with a tweak of the existing hydropower system, Kaspar Vereide, a hydraulic environmental engineering doctoral student at NTNU, believes he could turn Norway’s hydroelectric system into an electric storage facility.
In other words, a big, big battery.
Excess power from neighboring nations’ solar and wind farms would pump water uphill from lower reservoirs to higher ones in Norway, storing the water to generate electricity later. When countries […]
