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by iheartmemcache 3214 days ago
edit: Full mea culpa. Parent is right. Keeping this post intact since it still contains green-relevant information and some historical information that may be of interest. Big ups to Scotland for pushing this forward. The Northerners[0] are doing some clever things too like running their own municipal fiber after having their pleas being ignored for ages.

The Danes have been at it for almost the better part of a decade[1]. IIRC, their national transport is 100% green 24/7 and has been for a few years now. They've hit events where 100% of their entire country grid was wind-powered, and are so good at it China[2] brought in Danish consultants for assistance. Here's a real time chart of their energy infrastructure (including exports to Sweden/Norway/Germany)[3].

As a MA native, I remember people on the Cape would joke about the "bridge tax" (i.e., anything coming into the Cape is ~25% more). I know until recently[4] their internet connectivity was horrenduous. Energy there is fairly intermittent as well. Hopefully, they'll pick up a few Siemens units (you can pick up retired Siemens Vestas units on ebay for < 100k that are rated in the 10s of MW!) and deploy a unit or two[6], if only as a PR stunt to make themselves look 'progressive'. A win/win if they can increase employment and bring jobs to the locals in addition to that energy.

--

[0] http://gizmodo.com/5984187/british-farmers-install-their-own... "B4RN" is awesome. It's great to see what a community can get done when they ((apologies in advance:) broad)band together.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms_in...

[2] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-denmark-windpower-china/ch...

[3] https://en.energinet.dk/#energysystem - Real time chart! Porn for green energy nerds like me.

[4] Thier municipality started to offer gigabit through a peering with the Boston/North Shore providers to position their community as a "business friendly, gigabit ready" region in order to attract more businesses, rather than relying on the traditional tourist-town economy. They brought in some contractors to lay cable from Boston (or likely just North of Boston[5]) which is active now with tons of businesses using it, though I'm not entirely sure if the general populace has FttH.

[5] IIRC Andover or Quincy or somewheres around there (http://nationwidecolocation.com/massachusetts_colocation.htm) was one of the major peering points where a significant amount of NE traffic ran through. Traditionally it has great connectivity first due to all of the DARPA peering that occured around universities (MIT still has the 18.x.x.x class A perma-leased from ARIN). This continued through the late 90s/2000s with Verizon using those DC's as their major peer-points (which is incidentally why FiOS was rolled out so early in the Boston suburbs).

[6] You'd have to deploy them strategically in a region that isn't going to interfere with the yuppies boating experience as they go to the Vineyaahhhd on the 4th. NE has the same NIMBY problem that SF has in that regard.

4 comments

The significant word was floating.

The Danish offshore windfarms have foundations into the sea bed, like the other British and Dutch ones that have existed for over a decade:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms_in...

I'm not quite sure about the national transportation being 100% green, or at least I misunderstood what you are saying.

As a Dane I can promise you that our governmental public transport is not 100% green, our main long-distance trains (IC3) currently operate on diesel. Neither is the private transport 100% green, since people can buy traditional combustion engine based cars.

Indeed, only about a quarter of the Danish rail network is electrified -- quite poor when compared to the neighbours. There's a plan to electrify all the main lines by 2025, according to Wikipedia [1]. I'll be pleased when there's no longer an awful smog on the underground platforms at Nørreport.

DSB publish pollution figures for their fleet: https://www.dsb.dk/om-dsb/samfundsansvar/miljo/fakta-om-milj...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Denmark

MIT gave up half of 18/8 earlier this year, mostly to Amazon - https://www.networkworld.com/article/3191503/internet/mit-se...

They've internally started rolling out IPv4 NAT and IPv6

Not sure if you know, but MA has been trying to build a wind farm off the cape for a decade or more. It's now under contract, but they get sued at every stage, so it's not clear when it will deliver the first watt. Literally everyone is teaming up against wind power off Cape Cod.

https://www.capewind.org