2 ways to get reliable Internet connections in Greece

At the end of 2007 I wrote about the troubles of Greek broadband users. Since then, we have heard a lot of nice statistics about how Greece has the highest broadband growth rate in the EU and how a lot of Greek homes are coming online. But are statistics the true picture? Far from it…

In the last two months a lot has changed in terms of speeds offered, but not much in terms of quality of service. In February, under pressure from competitors and in order to stop defections, OTEnet-the ISP branch of OTE- decided to offer 24Mbps ADSL+, up from the 8Mbps that was the maximum till then. I was one of the first to apply but do not want to get in the details of the mess that ensued to get a barely working line after three whole weeks!

To cut things short, I ended up with a 2Mbps DSL connection that disconnects many times every hour -should it be called a disconnection?- and cannot be used reliably for many tasks I need to undertake. Maybe I will get in the details of the story above in a separate post, but what is important here is that I am not the only one to have these problems.

Project Better Place #2: Denmark to combine electric cars with wind energy

Project Better Place had its first strike of success in Israel, now Denmark becomes the second country that is definitely planning to go ahead with electric cars and the related infrastructure.

The difference between the two? Unlike Israel, Denmark has a huge wind energy generation base that on average provides 20% of the country’s needs. At night, when wind produced energy exceeds demand, the extra electricity will be used to charge the batteries of plug-in Renault cars -Renault-Nissan is the automotive partner of Project Better Place. The necessary 500,000 charging spots and 150 battery swap stations will be built by DONG, Denmark’s electricity company. In that respect, things will be much like in Israel, with drivers not owning the batteries and freely exchanging depleted batteries as necessary. Car batteries will also play the role of energy storage to take account of the fact that energy generation is unpredictable.

Good news, wind power capacity grows to 100 GW

According to a post in Treehugger and the Earth Policy Institute, global energy generation from wind is growing in leaps and will very soon -estimated within a month- reach 100 GW! This considerable amount covers the needs of 150 million people!

Although certainly not solving global energy problems, it is a great start and holds even more promise for the future, since rates of installations are increasing in several countries. In 13 of them, generation exceeds 1 GW and growth exceeds any other type of energy, including natural gas.

SoCal Edison builds 4.5 GW wind farm in California

The world is not short of plans for large zero emission energy production projects. ElectronRun has so far covered several solar projects or proposals worldwide -see links below. The Southwest states of the US are blessed with lots of sunshine, a fact that has recently led to several large solar project plans in this corner of the world.

Wind energy however has not shown its full potential yet, Southern California Edison plans a massive park just 100 miles north of LA at the Tehachapi desert. Construction is starting right now, and when the project is complete in 2013 it will produce 4.5 GW (yes 4500 Megawatts!) to power 3 million homes! The Horse Hollow Wind Project in Texas was so far the largest wind project in the US with 730 MW.

Are OTEC energy islands the answer to our energy needs?

Source: Telegraph

Big problems require large scale innovative solutions. ElectronRun has so far covered solar proposals for the energy needs of the EU and the US. Now OTEC artificial energy islands come as another large scale idea whose main energy source is water temperature differences. The idea is that when we have a difference of about 20 degrees Celsius between warm sea surface water and cold water from large depths, it is possible to drive turbines for energy production.

OTEC means Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion and is a method that was thought by French physicist Jacques-Arsene d’Arsonval. In fact, Georges Claude, a French inventor, proved the validity of the theory with his tests in the 1920s, but unfortunately did not manage to develop further.

There is two OTEC cycle types. The closed cycle uses ammonia that is vaporised by warm surface water, then drives turbines for energy production and is finally converted to liquid by cold water. The open cycle has an extra advantage, that of producing huge amounts of drinking water. There is quite a few ocean areas that offer the minimum required temperature differences, mostly around the equator.

Maglev = magnetic levitation + wind = green energy

Hey, do you feel guilty when you leave your PC on all night for those downloads and virus scans? There might hopefully be a solution to produce enough energy to alleviate this bad feeling if the Maglev project delivers as much as it promises. Just imagine a very large building spinning on a cushion of air, utilising huge vertical blades. The Maglev home page (http://magturbine.com/) requires username and password but has a link to a useful related article in Forbes. Ah yes, this technology is developed by chinese scientists. I hope these boys manage to get some results quickly before chinese coal plants cover the entire surface of the earth with black dust…