Lecture with Agust

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings we had lectures with Agust all about energy, turbines and hydropower. It is just the four of us in class with him lecturing which is good and bad. It is good because we all are forced to be attentive, no dozing off or playing on our phones and if we have questions or don't understand something we can just shout out and ask. The only problem is we are a very quiet bunch, so when he asks a question, we don't say much and our discussions are quite short. In those three days I felt like I learned a lot though. I have always had interest in renewable energy sources, but I never understood how they work, and now I do. We first went into energy concepts (work, power, energy etc.) and then about how a generator works with the magnet and a coil creating electricity. The next day it got more interesting because Agust went into detail about hydropower plants and how water can be used efficiently as an energy source. Basically the water falling is guided into a turbine, causing it to spin. The turbine is attached to a generator, which turns with it and, in short, creates electricity. Location is important because the two factors into the amount of energy that can be produced is flow rate and height of the drop. This causes a lot of discussion in Iceland because some of the best locations for power plants are the most beautiful waterfalls (Gulfoss). The hydropower plant also disrupts the natural ecology and flow of the river. The biggest rivers in Iceland are glacial rivers which carry a lot of silt, so when a reservoir is built above the power plant, a lot of settlement will occur also disrupting the natural environment. In most situations it seems like the issue is not how to design the plant to be most efficient in a location, but it's how to do so without harming the beauty and wildlife in that location. On Thursday we will see a complete hydropower plant as well as a plant that is under construction, which will be interesting.