What an eventful day 6! You may have seen a lot of what we did today during my Instagram takeover, but let’s break it down. Jaeja was really excited for today so you’ll see lots of pictures of him around.
But actually, let me start with something from last night… the northern lights!!! The skies were clear and the time was right, I tell you what that was a sight I cannot forget. The pictures fail to do the auroras justice, but hey they’re better than nothing.
We started off in the morning driving into Vik. I got my coffee (of course) and then drove over to the Dyrholaey Cliffs, which are, depending on volcanic activity and currents, the southernmost point of Iceland. The waves crashing into the cliffs and the panoramic views here were stunning. I feel like a broken record saying this but Iceland is otherworldly and pictures alone cannot tell the whole story of the view.
Jaeja also agrees that these waves are some of the most powerful and beautiful ones out there, just don’t try to swim in them! These waves are so powerful, they can change the shape of the entire beach overnight. That has to be a pretty tough spot to try and park a boat.
After getting our fill of these panoramic views (not really, but it’s all the more reason to come back to Iceland), we hopped back on the bus and headed over to the Hellisheiði Power Station. This is the largest geothermal power generation plant in Iceland, and one of the biggest in the world! Iceland produces roughly 30% of their power through geothermal means, plus it also helps supply a lot of the hot water.
Now when we talk scale, the Hellisheiði does not actually produce a ton of power… Iceland doesn’t need it. But the sustainability and carbon friendliness is where geothermal power takes the cake. Let me break down the process.
First, steam is harvested from the ground and separated out from the liquid water into high and low pressure systems. It then is sent to a steam turbine (pictured below) to turn a generator at 3000rpm. Contrary to many other kinds of steam turbine generators, these are running at rather low pressures (1-7.3 bar as opposed to 50-80 bar)! This adds yet another engineering challenge to this impressive feat.
Now this is like any other power generation system, outputting a high 11000 V that will be sent to the grid and used. But that’s not the end of the story for the heated water or the steam… let’s get even more sustainable!
Heated water is a huge demand from Reykjavik, so after the steam is sent through the turbines, it goes to the thermal plant. Here, the clean hot water is prepared to be sent 25km to Reykjavik, while the impurities (carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide) are dissolved in (slightly hotter) water to be reinjected into the ground. We took a look at one of the reinjection wells on the geothermal field. The process goes on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to give the capital region of Iceland electricity and hot water.
What an incredible power plant, plus it goes to show just how sustainable Iceland is. We then headed back into Reykjavik for our last two nights of great food, great shopping, and maybe, just maybe, one more view of the northern lights. Jaeja and I are looking forward to our time in Reykjavik, we’ll see you then!
Swanson School of Engineering 