Hellisheiði Power Plant - Iceland

On our Golden Circle trip from Reykjavik our first stop was the Hellisheiði Power Plant which is just 20 minutes drive from Reykjavík on Route 1, towards Hveragerði.

The building looks like a state of the art gallery and in fact to some extent it is.

You can see there are some pretty impressive pieces of art work presented beautifully in huge galleries that we walked around.

The galleries not only had art work but also had informative displays and interactive screens telling about geothermal activity and how the power is harnessed at the centre.

There is a coffee shop and gift shop as well as a very informative gallery explaining about geothermal activity and how the Icelandic people have harnessed this for their heating.

There was a very informative film and then a guide told us a bit more and took us onto the viewing platforms to see the shiny clean machinery below us that collected and transformed the energy to be used.

I don't think I have ever been to a power plant or factory that was as clean and quiet as this one was.

This shows the fact that this facility utilizes the world's largest geothermal turbine rotor blade measuring 31.2 " and it was supplied by Toshiba from Japan.

The Icelandic trolls. Gryla and Leppaludi. The Icelandic people are very superstitious about their fairy folk. Apparently Gryla liked too feast on naughty children.

It was pretty cold when we visited and although inside the power plant was warm, outside had a a deep layer of snow and a lot of ice.

 Although it looks like the middle of the night, it was in fact around 9,30 to 10.00 am when this photo was taken. It didn't really get light all day, more like dusk really. It was January so in summer they get light for nearly 24 hours instead.