Hi blog fans, it’s Daniel Christophersen again, back to provide more insight into my life as a Statkraft trainee. Since last time I’ve followed up my courageous move from Scotland to Norway by fearlessly travelling to, well, by moving back to the UK.

Being half Scottish moving to England shouldn’t exactly present much of a culture shock but London is a beast of its own, a metropolitan maze of culture, events, hopes, dreams and murky weather. I had joined Statkraft, first and foremost, to move back to Norway but being back in Britain and particularly to this wonderful city has been great. I can’t seem to explain what the feeling is exactly but my colleague/robot friend* Alex Gleim describes it as increasing blood levels of adrenaline and cortisol combined with high levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine finished off with a dash of serotonin. I’m not exactly sure what this means but he has a PHD so I’m inclined to trust his menacing intellect.

Nitty-gritty time. Statkraft has two offices in London. One is at Paddington where the work on the Triton Knoll project, which would be the world’s largest offshore wind-farm, is taking place while I am at the Moorgate office which includes finance, project development, origination and market teams. This office consists of two floors of talented and friendly people while there’s also a soon to be ready third floor which currently causes occasional power cuts.

I’ve found myself, as my main piece of work here, assisting the onshore project development team by researching and investigating different types and applications of storage technologies while liaising with suppliers to find out what they can provide with a view to potentially installing a battery in the UK in the future. It’s been an interesting piece of work in a field that is attracting attention at the company and indeed the whole industry due to the potentially huge effects it could have on the current networks, models and systems.

Meanwhile, outside of work there’s of course plenty going on in this city. Here are a few moments from my rotation here so far that give you a little taste of London life:

When it comes to my time as a trainee the days are trickling away. In fact, scrap that, the days are flowing like a river with time flying like the wind (sorry.) I sign off this time with the astuteness of renewable energy activist Arnold Schwarzenegger: “The future is green energy, sustainability, renewable energy …I feel as passionate about this as I did about fitness.” And, as an appropriate follow up to such sense from the Terminator, if I have learned anything from my time at Statkraft it’s not to question the wisdom of people that look like humans but may actually be robots.*

Daniel

*Alex Gleim may not actually be a robot but there is undeniably plenty of evidence suggesting that he is.