INTERVIEW | PROF EIVIND GRØV


“an interest or curiosity in tunnelling as a


career.” After mandatory military service, he


pursued his academic studies in Trondheim, at the then renowned Norges Tekniske Høyskole (NTH), pursuing a focus on engineering geology. He graduated in 1983. NTH was formed in 1910 and would later, in the mid-1990s, become a core part of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Later still and after much work on projects across the world, he would find himself teaching and supervising students back at NTNU, as an Adjunct Professor, over 2009-23, “at the same part of the Faculty where I used to be a student myself back in the day.” Studying geology gave him his wish to


travel and mostly work outside of an office. Over the following decades, he worked on a variety of underground projects. “I have worked a lot abroad. My first


experience was almost six years in Saudi Arabia in the ‘90s. That was interesting for many reasons, firstly because there was a totally different culture. Understanding and learning the culture is something which is absolutely mandatory for an engineer who is going abroad, so that was good experience; but it was also a project which was completely filled up with challenges for an engineering geologist. It really was years filled with learning from day one to the to the last day there. “Connected with that was that in such a


big project you are automatically building up your network – and this comes more or less for free. People I got to know thirty years ago in Saudi are still important members of my network. “Since then I have worked in China, in


South Korea, in Hong Kong, in Malta, in Chile, in Singapore, in Iceland – a lot of different places.” With such experiences comes wider


perspectives on possibilities for the use of underground space, as he discusses. He says energy storage too, in his view,


Top: Eivind Grøv studying rock mass quality in the upstream wall of Torpa hydro project, Norway – the last such scheme having an Air Cushion Chamber (and which had a “remarkable ratio” of rock cover/internal water pressure of 0,5 – “the lowest ever”.) He was Resident Engineer. The plant entered service in 1989 PHOTO COURTESY OF OPPLAND ENERGIVERK – NOW HAFSLUND E-CO


Above: Discussing pressure loss and mitigation options with the Project Manager (and translator) after first time filling the No.1 vertical shaft at Tian Huang Ping pumped storage hydro project, in China, in 1997. Head loss had resulted from water leaking from the lined shaft, it was found after dewatering of the shaft to investigate the problem PHOTO COURTESY OF TIAN HUANG PING HYDROELETRIC POWER COMPANY


36 | August 2025


is something that can certainly be put underground – and which, in the transition from fossil fuels to renewables, is becoming ever more important. There is a ‘ladder of complexity’ in liquid and gas storage, he says. In this, as in other applications, the easy underground projects have already been done. In Norway, and also elsewhere, they have


used unlined tunnels in hydropower plants for headraces and air cushion chambers, and more; he says that these developments


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