Hydroelectric power is the future!

June 3, 2010
Good morning Fauske! Today was our first day in Fauske and this town is so beautiful. Situated in the mountains and beside a fjord, the view from our host, Rolf Ericksen’s, house is amazing. Rolf designed this house in 1977 and then, with the help of some carpenters, helped build the house and moved into it in 1978. The inside of the house is very homey with a country décor and the walls are covered with memorabilia from his childhood town of Værøy in Lofoten. Rolf has recently started renovating his childhood home that he now co-owns with his sister and in fact, just came home to Fauske with us after being away for a month in Lofoten. He just installed a sauna in the basement and started re-paneling the outside walls of his house. Rolf showed us some photos of his home in Lofoten, which is located right on the water and has a magnificent mountain as a backdrop. Rolf, an avid mountaineer, goes hiking and trekking through the mountains whenever he has a chance and showed Mason and I, his guests, photos of several mountain tops including an 11-hour trip hiking five mountains in Værøy. Next weekend Rolf is planning to hike seven mountains in Bodø! In addition to his passion for mountaineering, Rolf takes pride in staying active and in shape. Every year, for the past 40 years, he has participated in a training circuit to test strength, agility and speed through a series of exercises and activities. The goal is to complete the circuit and prove that you are still in good health. Around his house, Rolf has several statues of a man throwing a javelin, a symbol of his continued completion of the program through the years.

Our first trip for the day is to the Siønstå Hydro Power Plant buried deep into the mountain. One of our hosts, Sigmund Normann, used to work at the facility and was able to arrange for our visit. Our guide for the day was Rober Normann, unrelated to Sigmund, who explained that this facility has a production capacity of 300 million kilowatt hours and a maximum production capacity of 60-65,000 kilowatts. The maximum flow can be 60 m3/seconds and the inflow is 1 billion m3/year. The pressure is a net head of 120 m. A similar coal plant used about 150,000 tons of caol per year with 30,000 tons of CO2 emission. In the Sulitjelma Valley, there are four power plants with a total production capacity of 11 billion kilwatt hours (1.1TWh/median year). Interestingly, this whole facility is monitored from a remote location at the headquarters in Fauske and is only has twice a week visits by an employee to check for any leaks or damages. The power plant draws from two reservoirs to run four stations.

Natural resources in Norway are owned by the government. Norway believes that the natural resources belong to the people, not to the company and therefore the heavy taxes go toward the pension fund. For this particular plant, 33 percent of the production belongs to Bodø, 11 percent to Fauske and 20 percent to the Danish. The Danish are looking to sell their percentage to attempt to rely on wind power. In Norway, 98 percent of the energy comes from hydro electric plants and this particular plant produces 0.8 percent of Norway’s hydro power. The reason hydro electric plants are favored over wind in Norway is because the only location where windmills would be effective would be along the coastline. However, wind power cannot easily be harnessed and transferred to homes inland. Instead, hydro electric power works more effectively due to the large number of fjords in Norway and in fact, Norway sells its surplus power to Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. Although the hydro electric plants are in their backyard, even the residents of Fauske and Bodø must pay a premium for their energy. The cost of the energy is determined by the outside purchasers from Denmark, Sweden and Netherlands. Norwegians pay the same rate.

How does a hydro electric plant work? There are two large reservoirs at the Siønstå Hydro Power Plant. One reservoir is 700 meters above sea level and drops 600 meters before it is converted into energy by the station. The larger the drop, the less electricity the plant needs to convert energy. As a side note, the power plant pays the government the same rate for energy consumption as the other consumers even though it is the place where this energy is created and harnessed. Norway does have the greatest consumption of energy per person at about 25,000 kw/per person. This is largely due to the miners and the smelters of aluminum and copper. The cost to run the Siønstå Hydro Power Plant is very minimal. The reservoir, dam and tunnels last forever and the generators and other heavy machinery have a lifetime of 25-30 years. Whenever an upgrade is made, the cost is generally made back within two years. There are currently 400-500 hydro electric power plants across Norway. The production cost of hydro electric energy is currently about 1.5 cents per kw/h, but the consumption cost is 10 cents per kw/h.

After a delicious lunch at the Sulitjelma Hotel, we headed over to the Salten Mining Museum, which opened in 1977 as a collection tools and equipment related to power plant and the mining caves. The most interesting display was a 3d replica of a mine from the outside and with a slice of the mountain to see the interior workings including the labyrinth of passageways and the locations of machinery throughout the tunnel and cave system.

Heading back to Fauske after the visit, the scenery was so majestic and impressive. The wind had died down so the fjords were still and reflecting the mountains surrounding the waterway. The roads were relatively new and free from potholes but extremely narrow and difficult to navigate when cars pass in both directions. One of the tunnels we passed through is famously known to be haunted by the ghost of a man who used to live in an isolated house in the mountains. Now he appears before cars periodically and often times drivers are worried they hit somebody before turning around and realizing that nobody was in the tunnel. Sadly, we did not see this ghost!