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Drawing experience and expertise from all corners of the Norwegian oil and gas industry, Flumill is making waves in the green energy transition. Keeping nature at the fore, the company’ s mission is to be recognized for pioneering innovative technologies and configurations that produce renewable energy from the natural flow of water, with minimal effect to marine ecosystems. Flumill’ s journey began back in 2002 with Jan Inge Eielsen, a Norwegian inventor from the oil and gas industry who devised an idea of using a helix as a turbine for energy production. Keen to turn Eielsen’ s initial conception into reality, Karl Tore Pedersen and Jon Inge Brattekaas – the founders of subsea EPC company, CSUB – took over the system’ s development process in 2010 and, over the course of the next decade, transformed the primary geometry into the effective design that exists today.
As Flumill sets to embark on the next stage in the system’ s launch, New Energy Today spoke with Andreas Brobakken,
Senior Engineer at Flumill, who shared insights into the research and development process behind the configuration, as well as its benefits in the clean energy transition, both in Norway and beyond. Andreas starts by detailing the extensive testing and development process that helped to formulate the efficiency, adaptability and effectiveness of the final design.
“ When it comes to the research and development of this system, we’ ve already completed the basic and most important parts of the process,” Andreas begins.“ Once we’ d established an acceptable proof, we tested the prototype in Norway first – which we funded completely – and then moved it out to the EMEC( European Marine Energy Centre). We tested the unit in the water, not to produce electricity to the grid but to test and verify our simulation models, which we found was very close to reality and so a very positive outcome. Because of this, we can now use our simulations model for almost any kind of development. We’ ve now developed
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