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Havfrue: A Googol-sized Mermaid Facing the Book
Oct 5th, 2018 by miki

2020-11-25 add news item about cable extension to Copenhagen, add Bulk data center blog link
2019-06-04
add details of Bulk data center in Esbjerg and infrastructure, add local news items about construction start
2019-05-08
add system summary from FCC application, elaborate on landing point discrepancies between FCC/cablemap, link to docs describing seg. 5 cable lay schedule
2019-03-06
fix links to submarinecablemap.com and some press, add info from TE Subcom experience doc., some general touch ups
2019-01-22
change “Danish Press Coverage” to “National Press”, add “International Press”, add some National about datacenter prospects & International Press items about contractors choosen
2018-10-05 initial commit

Europe, Denmark and my local neighbourhood of Western Jutland is going to get its connectivity boosted by the Havfrue transatlantic cable system being built by a consortium consisting of Google, Facebook, Aqua Comms and Bulk Infrastructure. To quote the announcement done by Google;

To increase capacity and resiliency in our North Atlantic systems, we’re working with Facebook, Aqua Comms and Bulk Infrastructure to build a direct submarine cable system connecting the U.S. to Denmark and Ireland. This cable, called Havfrue (Danish for “mermaid”), will be built by TE SubCom and is expected to come online by the end of 2019.
Google blog post, 2018-01-16

Digging into the details first reveals the projected trench as illustrated in below by some of the stakeholders;

Havfrue cable, cloud.google.com

Projected trench of the Havfrue cable as illustrated by cloud.google.com.

Havfrue cable, te.com

Projected trench of the Havfrue cable as illustrated by TE SubCom.

Projected layout of the Havfru cable.

Projected trench of the Havfrue cable as illustrated by submarinecablemap.com.

 

 

EDIT 2020-11-25: Additionally in 2019-06-21 Interxion announced a direct connection between the AEC2 landing site in Blaabjerg to its two datacenters in Ballerup/Copenhagen.

System Details

More digging into the Danish parts reveals that most sources mention Blåbjerg (Blaabjerg) as the Danish landing point for Havfrue (just as TAT-14), although ComputerWorld DK (see National Press below) relays the information that it will land at Endrup (where COBRAcable is terminated). However, a FCC application dated 2018-05-25 SCL-00214S (pdf) refers to it as the “Havfrue system” and specifically states that a new cable landing station will be constructed in Blaabjerg (as well as in Leckanvy, Ireland and Kristiansand, Norway);

The Havfrue system will consist of three segments. (1) The Main Trunk will connect the existing cable landing station at Wall, New Jersey with a new cable landing station to be constructed at Blaabjerg, Denmark. (2) The Ireland Branch will connect a new cable landing station to be constructed at Old Head Beach, Leckanvy, Ireland with a branching unit on the Main Trunk. (3) The Norway Branch will connect a new cable landing station at Kristiansand, Norway with a branching unit on the Main Trunk.
The application also reveals the following distribution of ownership and control of the main trunk (US<->DK);
  1. each 33.333% ownership

    • AEC2
    • Facebook (via Edge USA/Edge Network Services Limited)
  2. each 16.667% ownership

    • Google (via GU Holdings/Google Infrastructure Bermuda Ltd/affiliate)
    • Optibulk
Ownership of the Blaabjerg landing station will be jointly between the above via the corporations America Europe Connect 2 Denmark ApS (for AEC2) and Edge Denmark (for Facebook) but it will be operated by AEC2.
Other facts from the FCC application:
  • Name: Havfrue (maybe “Havfrue system”?)
  • Design capacity per fiber pair: 18 Tbps
  • Main trunk
    • Fiber pairs: 6
    • Capacity: 108 Tbps
    • Length: 7’211 km
  • Ireland branch
    • Fiber pairs: 6
    • Capacity: 108 Tbps
    • Length: 315 km
  •  Norway branch
    • Fiber pairs: 2
    • Capacity: 12 Tbps
    • Length: 199 km
  • Intended commercial operation: 2019-Q4
  • Landing points:
    • Wall, New Jersey
    • Blaabjerg, Denmark
    • Old Head Beach, Leckanvy, Ireland
    • Kristiansand, Norway
As a spin off of Aqua Comms’ involvment in the Havfrue system they are also connecting Esbjerg to the UK via a new cabled dubbed North Sea Connect.

Google is currently also projecting its own private subsea cables, some of the rationale behind their mixed private/consortium/lease approach are disclosed in blog post from 2018-07-17 announcing the Dunant cable, which is the first Google private transatlantic subsea cable projected to connect Virginia Beach and France.

Bulk Infrastructure

Data Center

EDIT 2020-11-25: see blog post detailing my visit to the construction site in June 2019

Bulk has announced that the Esbjerg data center location will be referred to as DK01 Campus which is described on the about page (EDIT 2020-11-25: now has its own page with different wording) as follows:

Bulk’s DK01 Campus, Esbjerg, southwest Denmark, will be a scalable Carrier Neutral Colocation data center ready for customers Q4 2019. Esbjerg is becoming a highly strategic data center location with several subsea fiber systems terminating within or nearby. These include Havfrue (US, Ireland, Norway, Denmark), Havhingsten (Ireland, Denmark), Cobra (Holland, Denmark), Skagerrak 4 (Norway Denmark), DANICE (Iceland, Denmark) and TAT-14 (United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark). Combined with excellent terrestrial connectivity, this will make Esbjerg the main international entry point to the Nordics and enable the Bulk DK01 campus to be the natural traffic exchange point.

An article (translated) in the local newspaper JydskeVestkysten first revealed the exact location of the center and renderings of its visual appearence and construction. The location is in Kjersing industrial area North of Esbjerg.

Infrastructure

A further map of the Bulk connections between Norway, Denmark and Ireland has been revealed in an article of Capacitymedia and on Bulk’s own fiber networks page. Also a partnership with Amazon about delivering both connectivity and datacenter infrastructure for AWS has been announced.

Further Information

News / Press releases

From Stakeholders

Construction Documentation

At Cable Map Sites

National Press

International Press

Other

Project Ember: name of a data center
Aug 20th, 2018 by miki

Taking a deeper look into the meta data of the document containing the Environmental Assessment (Danish: “miljøvurdering” shortened “MV”) and Environmental Impact Assessment (Danish: “miljøkonsekvensvurdering” or “vurdering af virkningerne på miljøet” shortened “VVM”) of the announced data center in Esbjerg reveals an interesting embedded title of the document which has not been carried out into other publicly used references.

The embedded PDF title of the document uses the “Project Ember” term which has not been indicated by other sources than articles in the JydskeVestkysten newspaper. The paper cite municipal sources but the municipality has not used the name directly in any of their communications.

The report authored by consultants COWI contains the following naming:

  • Official in text: “MILJØVURDERING (MV) OG MILJØKONSEKVENSVURDERING (VVM) – ERHVERVSOMRÅDE VED ESBJERG, AFGRÆNSNINGSRAPPORT
  • Filename of distributed PDF: “MV-VVM_afgrænsning.pdf
  • PDF meta data title: “Microsoft Word – Project_Ember_MV-VVM_afgrænsning_v.4.0.docx

Below a dump of the full meta data:

$ pdfinfo MV-VVM_afgr%c3%a6nsning.pdf
Title:          Microsoft Word – Project_Ember_MV-VVM_afgrænsning_v.4.0.docx
Author:         lojo
Creator:        PScript5.dll Version 5.2.2
Producer:       Acrobat Distiller 15.0 (Windows)
CreationDate:   Fri May 25 15:49:44 2018
ModDate:        Fri May 25 15:49:44 2018
Tagged:         no
UserProperties: no
Suspects:       no
Form:           none
JavaScript:     no
Pages:          25
Encrypted:      no
Page size:      595.22 x 842 pts (A4)
Page rot:       0
File size:      234728 bytes
Optimized:      yes
PDF version:    1.5

Hyperscale data center coming to Esbjerg
Jun 13th, 2018 by miki

2019-06-03 add (local|national) press items about bulk data center (follow this in post about Havfrue, no further updates here), minor text fixes
2019-03-07
add local and national press items announcing cancellation of project
2019-02-27
add local press item about property value, environmentalist opposition and local educational initiatives
2019-02-21
add local press item about unsatisfied land owners
2019-01-22 add official approval of plans, fix original chronology of Official Documentation items, add (local|national|international) press items about a.o. announcement of Bulk Infrastructure datacenter
2018-12-19 add documentation and local press items about postponed permit decision from municipality
2018-11-30 add a bunch of local press items, and archaeological section to documentation
2018-10-04 add local and national press item about Amsterdam trip and announcing Facebook as the developer
2018-09-06 add local press item about downscaling and older national press, reorder press items (top=latest)
2018-08-19 add local press item and Official Documentation section about housing abandonment
2018-08-01 add local press item with letter to editor
2018-06-13 updated with 1 new local + 1 new national press, rewrite first paragraphs, mention project name, mention DDI trade association, mention investindk & havfrue cable
2018-06-12 initial commit

Project Ember?

The local media of Western Jutland, JydskeVestkysten, has spearheaded the coverage of an interesting technology related story over the last weeks. The Esbjerg municipality planning departments has started to reveal details of the preparations for the development of an industrial site on a large swath of land just outside of Esbjerg seemingly for the purpose of a hyperscale data center of the proportions employed by FANG sized (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google) organizations. According to the media the project is by some municipal sources referred to as “Project Ember“. I have been unable to confirm this name from official documentation yet released or any other sources.

Neither the newly formed trade association named Danish Data Center Industry (DDI/DanishDCI) (in Danish: “Datacenter Industrien“) or the state’s Invest in Denmark office has brought any more light to the issue. The former has, however, tweeted a couple of times about it when it hit the national media and the latter has brought forward a vague hint that Western Denmark is an “attractive data centre hub“. I’m not in any doubt that this is partly driven by the announcement of the “HAVFRUE consortium“, which includes Facebook, that they intend to install a 108 Tb/s transatlantic cable crossing from New Jersey to Ireland and Esbjerg, as also announced by Invest in Denmark in January.

Below is an outline of the area in question (on an OpenStreetMap based map using the umap project) that I have drawn from the only geographical details yet leaked which is contained in the meeting agenda mentioned below. See also a visualisation of the area on a photo taken by local photographer Christer Holte.

I have collected links to all official documentation I have been able to locate and to press coverage below, and intend to keep updating this post as details is being revealed.

See full screen

Official Documentation

  • 2019-01-21: Notitia Networks ApS was assigned a permit for construction by city council as documented in minutes of the city council meeting at 2019-01-21, item 11, p. 28-35
    • Changes to municipal plan approved with minor changes
      • Addition of passage detailing that an ecological corridor planned in the area should be moved accordingly
      • Explicitly state that land reserved for E20 (European highway) is being removed from plan (I understand this as being used for this project instead of E20, but not quite sure)
      • Corrections to various erroneous references, quoted noise limits and uniformity of maps
    • Area planning
      • National Road Department (Danish: Vejdirektoratet) asked for clarification that signs and other marketing in the open land is prohibited, and that supervision authority for signs that are erected near roads is awarded to the department
      • Clarification of unclear maps showing road outline
      • By citizen request a visualization of the visual consequences from the viewpoint of Nørregårdsparken has been produced and amended to the appendixes
      • Allowed area of buildings for the security facilities at entrance/exit increased from 50 m2 to 75 m2
      • Various references and minor clarifications added
    • Plan & Environment Committee: approved on meeting 2019-01-08 (item 5, p. 11-17)
    • Financial Committe: approved the recommendation from Plan & Environment Comittee on meeting 2019-01-14 (item 13, p. 27-33)
    • Administration recommendation to city council: approve
    • City Council: approved the recommendation from Plan & Environment Comittee and Financial Committe
  • 2018-12-18: An extensive trove of documents totalling 12 appendixes to “case 04” (“sag 04”) pertaining to the municipality hearing has been released as a part of the agenda for 2018-12-18 meeting in Municipal Planning & Environment committee (Plan & Miljø-udvalg), the final decision postponed for January meeting
    • minutes: “Resolution Plan & Environment Committee on 18-12-2018: Postponed for meeting on 8 January 2019 for further investigation.
    • appendix 03: complete environmental assessment
    • appendix 04: supplemental visualisations
    • appendix 06: updated map of area
    • appendix 12: 158 pages of citizen comments and the municipal department’s comments to those
  • 2018-10-11: Sydvestjyske Museer (Museum of Southwest Jutland) has released an article about their preliminary findings (Google Translate’d) of the excavations done in the area.
    • Large parts is old heath without archaeological interest
    • In the eastern part remnants from Stone Age, Iron Age and WWII has been found
    • A complete predecessor of Andrup from around 0-200 AC has been found, parts of a later settlement from 200-800 AC has also been found, these are pending further investigations in 2019
  • 2018-08-07: Area mentioned in agenda/minutes for 2018-08-07 meeting in Municipal Planning & Environment committee (Plan & Miljø-udvalg)
    • Details in item 9 “Demolition of housing – Nordre Tovrupvej 21 and 26, Esbjerg” (Danish: “Nedlæggelse af boliger – Nordre Tovrupvej 21 og 26, Esbjerg”), p. 21-22 (case referred to as “Dok.nr.: 11768”, “Sagsid.: 18/20401”)
    • Requests that the committee approve liquidation and demolition of two current municipality owned rental houses in the area for the possible sale of the area for commercial purposes
    • Current inhabitants are willing to agree to voluntarily leave the rentals, but such formal agreements have not yet been established
    • Technical & Construction Committee assesses that the liquidation and subsequent sale of the aree will have a positive impact and is not outside current statutes
    • Approved by the committee
  • 2018-06-01: Public hearing announced (Google Translate’d) (original) about changed use of the area
    • Hearing closes 2018-06-15 (14 day period)
    • Accompanying report about environmental impact (VVM) discloses even more details
      • Area referred to as used for “establishing of extraordinary space consuming commercial entity near Esbjerg in the form of a data center” (ch. 2, p. 8)
      • Total area: 250 ha = 2’500’000 m2 (1 hectare = 10’000 m2) (ch. 2.2, p. 8)
      • Building area: “Current project entails approx. 250’000 m2 under roof with 200’000 m2 data warehouses and 50’000 m2 administration, logistics and service buildings, in addition to one or two 150 kV high voltage substations, each of approx. 30’000 m2 and diesel emergency power facilities of 6’500 m2” (ch. 2.3, p. 9)
      • Heat surplus: “Planning will leave open the possibility of reusing surplus heat produced at the facility, however no such plan exist at the moment” (ch. 2.3, p. 9)
  • 2018-05-28: Area mentioned in agenda/minutes for 2018-06-01 meeting in Municipal Technical & Construction committee (Teknik & Bygge-udvalg)
    • Details in item 7 “Closure of public and private roads in Andrup” (Danish: “Nedlæggelse af offentlige og private fællesveje ved Andrup”), p. 14-16 (case referred to as “Dok.nr.: 11186”, “Sagsid.: 18/12587”)
    • Area is referred to as “a contiguous area laid out for commercial purposes
    • Includes map with outline of area
    • Suggests public roads being closed for cars, new cycling paths being constructed passing North of area
    • Approved by the committee

Local Press

National Press

International Press

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© 2023 Mikkel Kirkgaard Nielsen, contents CC BY-SA 4.0