POWER November 2011 - 72

POWER IN thE NORdIc REgION
Energy. If that target is met, renewable energy
will account for more than two-thirds of
Norway's energy consumption in 2020-a far
higher proportion than in any EU country.
Minister of Petroleum and Energy Ola
Borten Moe said in a ministry release, " I am
pleased that the efforts to implement the renewable
energy directive have taken a large
step forward. This is important, not least in
relation to the establishment of the common
Norwegian-Swedish electricity certificate
market in 2012. I would also like to emphasise
that the government shares the EU's
ambitions regarding a strong focus on renewable
energy. Norway's target of 67.5 percent
reflects our ambitious policy in this area. "
As in the rest of the Nordic region, wind
power is playing a bigger role. Norway may
be a late entrant to the wind market, but its
goal was to make a big splash. In June 2009,
7. Wind on water. The Hywind Floating
Wind Turbine was the first large-scale wind
turbine supported by an underwater floating
structure similar to ones used by off-shore oil
rigs. Courtesy: StatoilHydro
the StatoilHydro-owned 2.3-MW Hywind
facility, the world's first large-scale floating
wind turbine (manufactured by Siemens), was
towed to a North Sea location near Karmøy
Island (Figure 7). (See our December 2009
issue for a story on this project, recognized
as a Top Plant.) StatoilHydro invested NOK
341 million in the project, and Enova provided
approximately NOK 59 million.
In March of this year, Norwegian-owned
Sway deployed the floating turbine Sway I
off the country's coast. The prototype is to
undergo up to two years of testing before the
company deploys its 5-MW floating wind
turbine off the coast of Karmøy, Norway. In
an interview last summer, Sway CEO Eystein
Borgen noted that land and near-shore
water for wind installations in Scandinavia
is becoming hard to come by, making deepwater,
floating (rather than seabed-mounted)
turbines with a ballast more attractive.
Blaaster Wind Technologies AS is another
home-grown wind turbine developer. Its
first 3-MW direct-drive prototype (partially
funded by Enova) will be installed in the first
quarter of 2012 at the Valsneset test center in
Norway, but it has its eye on a 6-MW model
for onshore and offshore installation.
Despite the new enthusiasm for wind
projects in Norway, in mid-August, Reuters
reported that Denmark's DONG Energy
sold its half of Norwegian wind power producer
Nordkraft Vind to co-owner Nordkraft
Produksjon for NOK 145 million. The company
explained that " The size of DONG Energy's
portfolio of wind projects in Norway
is found no longer to warrant a continued
8. Rendering of carbon storage in the Sleipner gas field. Courtesy: Alligator
film/BUG/Statoil
strategic focus on expansion of the Norwegian
market. "
Oddly enough, for a country with so few
sunlit hours a year, Norway is making a
name for itself in the solar industry and has
established production facilities for its solar
technology around the world. Renewable
Energy Corp. (REC), for example, has 3,900
employees globally and is among the world's
largest producers of polysilicon and wafers
for solar applications and is a growing manufacturer
of solar cells and modules. Though
headquartered in Oslo, its production facilities
include U.S. silicon materials plants in
Moses Lake, Wash., and Butte, Mont.; wafer
production sites in Glomfjord and Herøya, in
Norway and Tuas, Singapore; solar cell production
in Narvik, Norway and Singapore;
and solar module production in Singapore.
The country is also active in solar R&D.
The Norwegian company EnSol AS, for example,
has patented a prototype thin film
photovaltic cell design based on nanotechnology
that can be sprayed onto anything
from buildings to airplanes to turn virtually
anything into a power generator. The project's
objective is to achieve efficiency of
20% or greater. Commercialization isn't expected
before 2016.
Norway is also among the countries exploring
osmotic power. One of the world's
first osmotic power plants started operation
at Tofte on the Oslo fjord in Norway in November
2009, producing 2 kW to 4 kW after
more than a decade of collaborative research
and development by the Norwegian University
of Science and Technology and Norwegian
state-owned utility Statkraft.
Building a Smarter and More Robust
Grid. As NordREG notes, " The Nordic region
operates almost entirely as one synchronous
power system through [its] transmission grid.
The combined system has enabled an increased
security of supply as well as a more efficient
use of the generation capacity-during
wet years hydropower flows southwards and
eastwards whereas during dry years thermal
power flows northwards and westwards. "
Norway's reach is about to extend even
farther. Norwegian Statnett and British National
Grid are planning a 1,400-MW undersea
cable between Norway and the UK. At
800 kilometers (km/497 miles), it will be
significantly longer than the current record
holder, the 580-km cable between Norway
and the Netherlands, which was commissioned
in 2008.
At home, the country plans to have smart
meters installed for 2.6 million electricity
customers by the end of 2016. NVE recently
mandated that all 130 Norwegian utilities
deploy smart metering systems with highly
specific features and attributes, such as daily
72
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POWER November 2011

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