Everyone loves the
idea of renewable energy and a more environmentally friendly way to
generate power. Lets face it climate change or not. Gasoline, oil and
coal is terrible for everyone involved. Unless you love a powerful
roaring engine and various vehicles. Regardless, out by the north sea
they decided to build a power-plant to harness the energy generated
from ocean waves moving forwards. This complex was apparently the
first one in the world. An brilliant idea that looked fantastic on
paper. However there was one little problem, the place was built by
ignorant fools, that did not heed the warning from the locals. The
place has too harsh weather and in 1991 a terrible storm hit the
coast of Norway and broke the plant, crushed concrete and toppled a
bridge over. The result turned the place into rubble and shut down
the project. Mind you this storm did a number of everything around us
here in Norway, a great deal of trees all over the place was blow
over, causing a lot of trouble and untold destruction across the
land. Unfortunately it is very difficult to find a picture of the
place when it was still operational and was more than a pile of
rubble.
I have seen what a
lot of the place look liked before waves destroyed rest of the bridge
and kids burnt down the barracks where workers lived. Other than that
I’ve seen a picture of what the place looked like when it was
operational. Naturally that picture was of a very low resolution and
is exceedingly hard to find, if I only could find out where I put the
backup picture. Regardless, the complex had a tall metal tower with a
cone shaped roof, which where attached to a concrete foundation.
Which could only be entered from the top, however that structure is
now long gone, leaving nothing but a huge slab with a hole in the
middle. To reach this spot they built a bridge over the place the
waves are funneled trough. Naturally one half of it got flung off the
pillars and is now rubble. Decades later the rest of the bridge got
ruined as well. Now the two pieces lays next to each other on top of
various debris and rocks.
There was a red
barrack where the workers stayed, it was eventually trashed,
vandalized and burnt to the ground. Then there was two minor shacks
with some equipment inside, outside of that there is the main
generator where the rusty turbine resides. It has a broken rusty door
that allows free access to the location, despite the attempts at
keeping it closed.
From the lay of the
land, the concept seems simple enough. Waves are funneled through a
narrow concrete canal until it reaches a turbine at a high velocity.
The turbine spins around and power is generated by the motion. Based
on the destruction I can only assume the falling bridge and stones
broke the wave channeling tube and the rocks filled the reservoir. It
is also most likely that the generator burnt out as well, but I have
no proof of that.
Never the less, the
place is now one that can be freely visited and is a fairly popular
tourist location, now its just a question of time until the bridge
that provides access to the isolated island is destroyed as well.
Now the place serves
as a reminder of how powerful the forces of nature actually is and
why bad architecture will ruin any project. A video of me walking
through the place can be seen on the link bellow. I removed the sound
due to the wind blowing into the microphone.
https://youtu.be/b7pDRom9s7k
Zaceron signing out.
No comments:
Post a Comment