cubais – shutterstock.com
Off the coast of Shanghai, China has launched the world’s first underwater data center powered by offshore wind power, The Guardian reports. The facility is intended to reduce both energy consumption and the need for fresh water compared to conventional data centers.
24 MW of power – from a depth of ten meters
The “Shanghai Lingang Undersea Datacentre Project” was commissioned in May and has a capacity of 24 megawatts (MW). The facility is located about ten kilometers off the coast of Shanghai, at a depth of ten meters below the sea surface. It is powered by a nearby offshore wind farm. By using the natural cooling effect of seawater, the energy requirement for cooling is also significantly reduced.
According to Chinese authorities, the data center uses more than 20 percent less energy than comparable land-based facilities. The investment costs are expected to amount to 1.6 billion yuan, which corresponds to around 190 million euros.
