Company visits

 

Hello everybody! Obviously, you cannot answer…. But it is still a nice joke ! Well anyway….You’re probably wondering what happened to us lastly!

 

We have some stories to tell you, and mine today is about the buildings and factory we could visit. Indeed, UCN could schedule some visits related to our lectures during the last weeks. The first one, located really close to the campus, was a district heating station. It was a small one, used nowadays only in case of emergency. But the point here was not to see the hugest stuff we could : the way that system works is really simple (water is heated and then sent to pipes through the city). It was just to get an overview of this kind of installation. It was honestly not the best visit ever, but it was relevant. Just one negative point : it was really difficult to understand the technician’s explications because of his accent.

 

The second visit was divided in two parts. We took a bus and travelled during about 1hour from UCN, to go to a power plant. That power plant was really amazing, mainly because of its efficiency, you will see. Actually, this plant burnt wastes to get electricity using turbines. That is a classical process. But the efficiency of the burning is about 95%!! That is really huge. But there is better: 97% of the ashes gotten back after the burning process is reused!! For example, metallic parts are melted, and other parts are for example used to cover roads.

We also could see there some solar mirrors used to heat water in pipes. Really awesome and green energy! To summarize this part of the day: I felt more hopeful about the energy in the future!

 

The second part of the day was spent in another kind of installation : a sustainable energy museum. First good thing: the weather was great and the place really wonderful. We could eat outside, chilling out and watching the river. It was the first time we left the big cities, because we have no car, and it was really soothing. After that great break, we started the visit, and we could see a lot of different ways to produce energy without CO2 emission or damage to the planet. There was of course a lot of well-known stuff : windmills, solar panels….but also some really original and innovative solutions.

 

That was really good : we learnt a lot about different ways to improve our energy production; and we visited a really beautiful place!!

 

I hope you enjoyed reading! Next articles will probably be about Copenhagen, because we have planed to go there soon!!! I’m really exited!

 

Well, see you later, enjoy!

Axel