We were able to visit Christian Michaelson Research (CMR) Institute, located in a lovely neighborhood of Bergen, Norway. The institution is owned by the University of Bergen and performs gas and renewables research with its 175 employees. We were served an amazing lunch in the company cafeteria, and was able to attend a lecture given by four employees. Two of the lecturers, Annette Stephansen and Vegard Laukhammer, spoke about offshore wind and hydrogen power, respectively.
The presentation began with Stephansen introducing a graphic of the European Union Power Mix, and how the patterns regarding how the union is powered has evolved from the year 2000 to 2012. According to the graphic, countries have begun to turn away from nuclear power due to recent safety concerns following events such as Fukushima. Thus, other renewables have risen in popularity. For example, offshore wind has increased from 2% of the EU Power Mix in 2000 to 11%. This increased interest in offshore wind has led to more innovations with regards to the technology, especially on the part of CMR and NORCOWE, better known as the Norwegian Centre for Offshore Wind Energy. We learned that this organization is part of the research council within Norway’s eight-year scheme for innovation in renewables. The program allows for a 247 MNOK budget from 2009 to 2017, which allows for grand strides within renewable technology research. However, offshore wind does not have a large market in Norway due to the dominant hydropower usage in the nation. A substantial amount of the research is given to nations with larger offshore wind markets, such as the United Kingdom. We learned that the United Kingdom has a large amount of offshore wind capacity, and the nation has invested 75 billion dollars in the development of the technology.
According to a text we read in class written by Mackay, shallow offshore wind costs about twice the cost of onshore wind, and deep offshore wind is currently not even close to economically feasible. This high cost is due to the maintenance necessary for the technology and the steel foundations that are often stationed on the seafloor. To reduce cost, CMR and NORCOWE have been trying to develop floating turbines and lidar technology. Lidar technology is impressive in that it is a laser beam that gets reflected by small particles in the atmosphere to determine how fast they are moving. These large boxes that contain the technology can be placed on a turbine platform, and they are less expensive than a stationary monitoring device build into a turbine with a seafloor foundation. It was very interesting to learn about specific innovations that are being researched to reduce the cost of this impressive technology.
Another portion of our lecture at CMR covered the potential of hydrogen being used as a renewable energy source. As an energy carrier, hydrogen power is quite relevant to determining feasible energy options. Our class learned about hydrogen as an energy carrier, and Vegard Laukhammer discussed its potential to be used to power electrical ferries and cruise ships in Norway, which are very common. They explained that in Bergen currently, smoke covers the city when these large ships are stationed in the harbor, which would be avoided with the installation of hydrogen fuel cells to power the mode of transport. Hydrogen is also being studied to power buildings, cars, and even satellites in space! By replacing batteries with fuel cells in satellites, we would be able to reduce the weight of the technology and thus the cost of getting it into space, which would be quite an impressive feat.
In our class, we discussed the concerns surrounding the safety of hydrogen powered cars because of the chemical’s explosive nature, but when they were brought up at CMR, Laukhammer debunked them. He argues that companies like Toyota and BMW are already marketing hydrogen powered cars, and all of them have received 5-star ratings. He made the claim that in car shows, companies frequently shoot bullets into the hydrogen engine to prove it! Although this technology seems capable of competing with fossil fueled cars in this sense, they are far more expensive and would require more hydrogen fueling stations than exist currently. In the future, hopefully the technology will be further researched and incentivized. Our time at CMR was impressive, and we learned a substantial amount regarding offshore wind and hydrogen power advancements.
