Securing the Future
More than a millennium after Viking longships tamed the seas and rivers of northern Europe, modern-day Norwegians continue to nurture their relationship with water.
As a nation renowned for its lengthy coastline and abundance of fjords, lakes and glaciers, Norway has relied on the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE), a government agency tasked with the management and regulation of the country’s vast water resources and energy supply since 1921.
While the NVE does not directly produce energy, its mandate includes ensuring that Norwegian hydropower development is beneficial to the country’s 5.5-million people and that it be environmentally friendly.
Despite being one of the world’s leading oil and gas producing nations, Norway relies almost entirely on renewable sources of electricity with hydropower accounting for close to 99 per cent of its energy consumption, thus allowing it to export the majority of its fossil fuels.
Along with its focus on increasing energy efficiency, the NVE is also tasked with contingency planning for floods, disaster risk reduction, regulation of the national energy grid and research and development in the field of hydrology.
KNUT MAGNE MOEN
One of the NVE’s more than 400 employees is veteran engineer Knut Møen, a specialist advisor for all things involving hydro technology. Over his 27 years of service with the directorate, Moen has been involved with a wide array of hydro-technological topics, including soil, ground and surface water, stream flow gauging, sediment and bed load gauging, and snow water equivalent measuring.
Describing himself as a “true engineer in heart and soul”, Moen pours his passion into creating automatic sensing techniques and automation of hydrology-related tasks.
“We have a large hydrology department that does all the forecasting and a lot of research, so while it’s a broad range it all comes down to water, related groundwater, snow and climate studies,” says Moen, who considers himself more of a hands-on engineer rather than a spokesman for the overall work of the directorate.
“I’m sort of the microscopic guy, an engineer working on very small things and without a broad picture. So, with climate change becoming such a big issue, we’re seeing, for example, a drought in Spain followed by flooding. All of that calls for more gauging out in the field.”
EFFICIENCY
While the NVE is a government entity in one of the most financially-stable countries in the world, that doesn’t mean it has an unlimited budget. In fact, the department is very cognizant of its own resources and, like private companies, it strives to operate in the most cost-efficient manner possible.
“Over the years, my world hasn’t changed so much – we face much the same obstacles,” says Moen. “We have too few resources and too few people. And, because of that we do not always have enough time to do things.”
One of the major challenges facing Moen and his team was to professionalize and streamline its hydrological gauging network in response to the continuing evolution of cellular technology and its impact on remote measurements.
When it came time for upgrades, the NVE was faced with refurbishing instruments at more than 5,600 locations across Norway. But short on manpower, Moen looked for a more efficient way to get the job done.
“It was a big undertaking as we had to refurbish Norway’s entire hydrological network that is used for power production, prognosis, flood warnings and more,” he says.
“So, I tried going off-the-shelf. I would take my plasma cutter and buy sheets of metal and cut them out. It would look crappy. Instead of 90 degree angles, I was getting 92 degrees instead. The time spent on customizing off-the-shelf parts is better spent on innovation.”
WORKING WITH PROTOCASE
Driven by his true passion for hands-on engineering, Moen searched externally for help.
“When I discovered Protocase, it opened up a whole new world for me because now I don’t have to spend time customizing enclosures, buying something off-the-shelf and then spending two days in the workshop only to finish with a crappy product,” muses Moen.
“Now I can just use the Protocase Designer (proprietary engineering and design software), put things together, ship it off and get a quote. That allows me to get on with my life and do what I really to do, which is programming, the wet work of hydrology, being in the field, installing things and seeing how it works.”
Today, Protocase supplies the NVE with a number of vital components for its outdoor instrumentation concepts on both new and retrofit installations.
SAVING TIME AND MONEY
Moen explains that his team is ripping out the interiors of some 350 instrumentation cabinets and replacing them with new, pre-built and tested instrumentation mounted on Protocase-made back plates.
“That allows our field personnel to do the job in just a few minutes, as the design is tailor-made to fit various generations of cabinets from different manufacturers,” he says, adding that another key component is a universal multi-bracket that fits all NVE equipment and can be adapted for different mounting methods for pipes, calendar masts and walls.
“This saves us a ton of work every time we need to fasten something in the field. With a handful of extra, and carefully placed, PEMs on the plate, we can re-use a lot of old, ever-lasting components, saving both money and environment, which ticks off the sustainability box!”
Moen also praises Protocase’s ability to make small orders of customized enclosures with “weird” mounting requirements. He also likes the finished products.
“It’s easier to get acceptance and enthusiasm from partners and customers when the prototypes look nice and professional, rather than like something out of a primary school shop class.”