Hafslund Eco has awarded GE Vernova’s hydropower business a contract to service the 840 MW Aurland 1 hydropower facility in Norway. The hydro unit of GE Vernova will be responsible for delivering new rotor poles for the plant’s three 280 MW/30-megavolt ampere water-cooled generators. GE Vernova intends to complete the project between the summers of 2025 and 2027. It will assemble the rotor poles at its Norwegian services factory in Lier. The poles will enhance the efficiency and lifespan of the generators for decades. Built between 1969 and 1989, Aurland 1 is the country’s third-largest power plant and Hafslund Eco’s largest power plant.
In June 2023, Norsk Hydro produced the world’s first aluminum where green hydrogen was used to fuel the smelting process. The Norwegian firm, which is one of the largest aluminum companies globally, smelted 225 tonnes of recycled aluminium at its facility in Navarra, Spain, with three batches fueled by a blend of hydrogen and fossil gas and six by pure hydrogen. It now plans to assess how differences in the way hydrogen burns compared to methane will affect both the overall smelting process or metal quality, with results to be published this autumn. The company also plans to use the test batches of aluminium to make further products.
