Hello and welcome to a source of renewable inspiration! My name is Louise Hammarberg and I participate in the Vattenfall international trainee program. The aim of my blog is to give an insight of the trainee program, share my experiences as well as outline the possibilities within the smart energy system of the future.

I was born and raised in Stockholm and travelled to Australia after graduating from high school. I studied at a collage in Sydney, played tennis and other outdoor sports.  After a joyful time on the surfboard I moved to Lund for a half decade of university studies. I studied Business Administration and Management at the Lund School of Economics and Management. I ended up with a Bachelor in Strategic Management and a Master degree in Technology Management, which is a cooperation between the School of Economics and the School of Engineering. The program reconnects the subjects of technology, economy and management with a focus on project leading.

I usually describe myself to be an economist who understands the technical language, aiming to work with innovation, sustainability and communication. I found the possibility to interconnect these subjects within the energy business. The industry is facing huge challenges on its way towards a low carbon future, seeking for new system solutions, new collaboration partners and a harmonisation of regulation systems. The energy business is heading towards a paradigm shift in terms of more renewables, electric vehicles and an active demand side, all enabled by smarter grids.

I have during my first six month been working with connection services of renewables, Emobility and Smart Grids.

I spent the first month of the program in Trollhättan working with an investment program for wind power connections at Distribution Nordic. I gained a good knowledge of the economics in the distribution business and the fact that the grid is the bottleneck in the new energy system.

Thereafter, I joined the business development team of green Emobility at Vattenfall Europe Innovation in Berlin. The driver for Emobility on the German market is the increasing need for storage capacity due to the increasing demand of renewables. The battery of an electric vehicle is seen as a storage room for wind power.

My next project was within grid innovation in Berlin/Hamburg where I was involved in Demand Side Management. My focus was to investigate how to actively steer the energy consumption of the consumers by price signals and differentiated tariffs.

Furthermore, I have been participating in seminar weeks in Stockholm, Berlin and Warsaw together with my dear trainee colleagues. We are in total 15 trainees from Sweden, Germany, Holland, Poland, Finland and the UK. The seminar weeks provides us with introductions to the various operations within Vattenfall, knowledge about the value chain as well as valuable training in management, team building and personal development.

As a trainee I have got a great chance to explore and get to know various areas of the company, meet lots of skilful colleagues and to share findings throughout the organisation. It has also been possible to shape my own content of my various assignments.

Please let me know if you have any questions regarding any of this. I hope to keep you updated with new findings and experiences!