News archive

The Interreg Aurora program anounced on November 24th that three of our projects will revieve funding. Aurora is a new programme within Interreg for boardercrossing cooperation from 2021 to 2027, including Norway, Sweden, Finland and Sápmi.

SUMMATION - Sustainable Autonomous Systems and Solutions

The project aims to demonstrate monitoring, inspection and tracking using automonous UAV flights for various cases like reindeer herding, road traffic, railroad monitoring and ice & snow conditions. This project is led by FMI with UiT, Centria and LTU as partners.

SAMHand - Sustainable Autonomous Material Handling

The project will address material handling in resource value chains. The ojective is to show how a sustainable material handling system based on fossil free autonomous vehicles shall be configured. This project is led by LTU with UiT, Sintef Narvik, OAMK and University of Oulu as patners.

HE4T - Harvesting Energy for Data Acquisition and Transfer

The main aim of this project is to develop new energy autonomous technologies by which it is possible to get clean and environmentally friendly energy to be used in a wide range of applications for instance in the monitoring of systems, structures, and components, maintenance, condition monitoring, wireless communication, data processing and analytics, utilization in sensors and sensor network technologies and automation. The project is led by Lapland University of Applied Sciences with UiT, LTU and University of Vaasa as partners.

More information for each project will be available on the research group webpage once the projects are established.

A workshop on fuel cells and power electronics will be arranged in 2023, after recieving funding from ARC strategic funds.

This project aims to arrange a workshop/seminar/conference at UiT Campus Narvik focusing on the integration of fuel cells with power electronics for electricity production. The main goal for the event is to gather participants from industry, academia, and government to share research, experience, and challenges.

Bjarte Hoff leading the project, where more details is expected towards the summer 2022. The event is expected to take place in Narvik during the summer 2023.

The initial work organizing the workshop is funded by the Arctic Centre of Sustainable Energy (ARC) strategic funds.

HYDROGENi, a new centre for environment-friendly energy research in hydrogen and ammonia was announced by the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy 11th of March. An investment of 200 MNOK over eight years  will be dedicated to research  within hydrogen and ammonia

Hydrogen is emerging as one of the important energy carriers for the transition to a more sustainable future. The HYDROGENi centre is led by Sintef and include a cluster with over 50 partners from industry and academia, including UiT from campus Narvik and Tromsø.

UiT is involved in both the technical and societal activitis in the centre and will host two postdoc/Ph.d. positions. One position is within the Department of Electrical Engineering in cooperation with IFE, focusing on electrical integration, power conditioning and controls for large maritime PEM fuel cell systems.

UiT News article:
https://uit.no/nyheter/artikkel?p_document_id=767789

Press release from the Research Council of Norway:
https://www.forskningsradet.no/om-forskningsradet/pressekontakt/pressemeldinger/2022/oppretter-to-nye-forskningssentre-pa-hydrogen/

Press release from Sintef:
https://www.sintef.no/siste-nytt/2022/nytt_hydrogen_forskningssenter/

A new Enova funded concept study will investigate the Port og Narvik as an energy hub

Until march 2022, a new concept study will investigate the design and organization of the Port of Narvik as en energy hub. This includes the future development maritime fuels and energy carriers, such as batteries, hydrogen and ammonia. The work is linked to ongoing plans for future utilization of the area. UiT is included in the consortia together with the Port of Narvik, Smart Innovation Norway, Bane NOR, Nordkraft and Narvikgården.

For more information, see the project page: https://uit.no/research/elsys/project?pid=750568

Associate professor Bjarte Hoff is part of the technical commitee for The International Conference on Renewable Energies and Smart Technologies (REST), organized 28-29th of July, Trana Albania

The conference aims to bring researchers, engineers, and key stakeholders interested in cutting-edge findings in REST to share and discuss advances and developments in these fields. Therefore, it aims to assist academicians, business executives, researchers, scientists, companies, communities, and agencies to keep up to date on new developments in their specialist fields and join forces in finding alternative energy solutions to current environmental and climate issues.

For those interested, full papers can be submitted until March 15 2022.

More information about the commitee can be found on: https://ic-rest.org/

A pre-project sets out to evaluating energy production based on hydrogen fuel cells as a replacement of diesel generators

With the expected availability of hydrogen as a energy carrier and fuel, this pre-project will investigate relevant aspects of creating a solution to replace diesel generators in the aquaculture and tourism industry. Associate professor Bjarte Hoff and the group of Electromechanical Systems will focus on the electrical part of such solution, while professor Mohammad Mustafa and his team focuses on the use of hydrogen, fuel cells and safety aspects.

This contract research project is provided to UiT by Kupa, Maritim Sveiseservice and Spiderm where the overall project is financed by the Norwegian Research Council through FORREGION

Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries has appointed associate professor Bjarte Hoff  as member in the Maritim21 strategy group, representing UiT in creating a report for government regarding the future research, development and innovation in the Norwegian maritime sector.

The strategy group

The strategy group was appointed 28th of April by the Iselin Nybø, Minister of Trade and Industry, where the final report is to be submitted by the end of 2021. During this time, there will be organized meetings/events to estasblish the UiT perspective and input to the report.

More information canbe found here: https://www.maritim21.no/

The group consists of:

• Ingrid Schjølberg (NTNU), group leader
• Roar Os Aadland (Norges Handelshøyskole)
• Liv Reidun Grimstvedt (Høgskulen på Vestlandet)
• Bjarte Hoff (UiT The Arctic University of Norway)
• Tuva Flagstad-Andersen (DNV)
• Gunvor Ulstein (Ulsmo AS)
• Sonja Hansen (Corvus AS)
• Glen Bradley (Rostein AS)
• Ingrid Kylstad (ZeroLab by Torvald Klaveness)
• Nina Rasmussen (Fiskebåt)
• Marius Gjerset (Zero)
• Lars Gørvell-Dahll (Norsk Industri)
• Olav Lie (LO) og Kolbjørn Berge (Sjøfartsdirektoratet)

Mandate and purpose

The strategy group will develop proposals for a coherent, overall and well-anchored strategy for research, development and innovation for the maritime industry. The strategy will provide a special review of technology and research opportunities related to green shipping and digitization. The proposal shall provide strategic direction and overall assessments, and not promote specific appropriation proposals.

In this context, the maritime industry means the shipping industry, the shipbuilding industry, service providers and equipment suppliers to all types of ships and other floating vessels. It also includes vessels and maritime technology related to other maritime industries, including aquaculture, fisheries, offshore oil and gas and offshore renewable energy, as well as competence building in research environments on technological and social science topics of importance to the Norwegian maritime industry.

The strategy will point to the need for knowledge for the maritime industry along the entire value chain from research to commercialization. The purpose is a holistic thinking around the investment in maritime research, development and innovation by connecting the authorities, the policy instruments, business, organizations and research environments more closely.

Norway is leading in electric transport within maritim sector, and are among the best to utilize electric road wehicles and committ to electric aircrafts

At the Electrify Alaska virtual conference 21st of October, Bjarte Hoff presented experences and future trends within electric ships in Norway. The full presentation can be seen here: https://hdl.handle.net/10037/20281

During the discussions and other presentations, it became evident that Norway has a leading role in all three major types of electric transport: sea, road and air. Norway has a large maritime industry working on technology development in electric ships. Through government incentives, the number of electric vessels (ships and boats) and electric raod vehicles increases year by year. Norway through Avinor was also the first to committ to electric aircrafts, well suited for the netword of small Norwegian airports.

The research group is now on social media

To make our activities more visible, we are now on both Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to follow us and get updated on our activities.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/elmechsys

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elmechsys

Pål Gunnar og Bjarte bidrog med to videoar av vår forskingsaktivitet til Forskningsdagene 2020

Forskningsdagene 2020 vart i år holdt digitalt, der UiT i Narvik organiserte innsamling og publisering av videoklipp av spennande prosjekt og aktivitetar ved campus Narvik. Elektromekaniske systemer levert to bidrag som er tilgjengeleg på YouTube:

• Bruk av satellittbilder av Pål Gunnar Ellingsen
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyRJXC2GM98
• AutoCat - Autonom elektrisk katamaran av Bjarte Hoff
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbZpSEKvx9A

Pawan Sharma is leading a new ARC strategic project: "Challenges and Future Perspectives of Smart Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Control Technology Solutions at the Arctic region-Norway ".

The primary objective of the project is to build strategic expertise in solar power/photovoltaic (PV) control technology (i.e., power electronics converter/inverter control, maximum power point tracking (MPPT), power management) and the technical challenges (i.e., sizing/selection of energy storages, grid issues due to lack of inertia, operation and maintenance issues) for the grid-connected and/or in off-grid/standalone systems.

The project is starting in 2020 and will be completed in 2021.