Having completed construction in December, the world's first commercial underwater data center is undergoing preparatory work for initial operations in seawaters just off Lingshui Li autonomous county, Hainan province, said its builder, Beijing Highlander Digital Technology Co Ltd, a company engaged in advanced sea .
How does data storage use water?
Almost all of the power put into data centre servers is converted into heat and the sheer size of the units only exacerbates this, so in order to maintain stable functional temperatures water is passed through a heat exchange system to cool the equipment and stop it overheating..
Is data stored under the sea?
An underwater data center is exactly what it sounds like – a data center immersed in a body of water. The concept behind underwater data centers is simple enough: You take IT infrastructure (like servers and storage media), install them in a water-tight vessel and then submerge it under the water.Jun 6, 2023.
Why is cloud storage under water?
Computers really don't like the same type of environment that we humans like. Oxygen causes the components to corrode bumps and jostling can cause things to get disconnected. By putting it down at the bottom of the ocean, we removed all the oxygen from the cylinder and filled it with dry nitrogen instead.Dec 27, 2022.
Why is Microsoft data center in the ocean?
Researchers on the project hypothesized that having a sealed container on the ocean floor with a low-humidity nitrogen environment and cold, stable temperatures would better protect the servers and increase reliability. “Once you're down 20 to 30 meters into the water, you're out of the weather,” Shepperd says..
film Wall-E a patent Google filed in 2008 laid out plans for a data center on a barge that is continually powered by ocean currents. using seawater to cool the servers. this is yet another way Google is leading the world to a better place because the energy dedicated to powering America's.
The key benefit of placing data centers underwater is the low temperature. The ocean bed is always cool which helps in nullifying the heat produced by the servers. All the cooling is naturally produced by sea at zero cost.
The retrieval launched the final phase of a years-long effort that proved the concept of underwater datacenters is feasible, as well as logistically, environmentally and economically practical.Sep 14, 2020
An underwater data center is exactly what it sounds like – a data center immersed in a body of water. The concept behind underwater data centers is simple enough: You take IT infrastructure (like servers and storage media), install them in a water-tight vessel and then submerge it under the water.
Sep 14, 2020Microsoft's Project Natick team proved the underwater datacenter concept was feasible during a 105-day deployment in the Pacific Ocean in 2015.
The concept behind underwater data centers is simple enough: You take IT infrastructure (like servers and storage media), install them in a water-tight vessel and then submerge it under the water.
Overview
By Rory Cellan-Jones
Technology correspondent
@BBCRoryCJ
Two years ago
No humans, few failures
Their first conclusion is that the cylinder packed with servers had a lower failure rate than a conventional data centre
Reliably green
Project Natick was partly about working out whether clusters of small underwater data centres for short-term use might be a commercial proposition
Can data centres go deep underwater?
This isn’t the first time data centres have gone deep underwater, however
Chinese company Highlander announced last month that it had signed an agreement to build a commercial underwater data centre at Sanya, a coastal city on the South of Hainan Island
How much does it cost to store data underwater?
On land, it would take about 14 days and cost about €165,000 per mile
The feasibility of underwater data storage was proved by Microsoft in 2020
In 2018, the software giant launched “Project Natick”, dropping a data centre containing 855 servers to the seabed off Orkney, an archipelago on the northeastern coast of Scotland
What are subsea data centres?
Data centres are used to centralise shared information technology (IT) operations and are essential for the running of our daily lives; the Cloud, Google, and Meta all have data centres that they use to run their products
Data centres are currently built on land, sometimes in rural areas far from big populated areas
Storage of carbon dioxide in the North Sea
Carbon storage in the North Sea includes programmes being run by several Northern European countries to capture carbon, and store it under the North Sea in either old oil and gas workings, or within saline aquifers. Whilst there have been some moves to international co-operation, most of the Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) programmes are governed by the laws of the country that is running them. Because the governments have pledged net zero carbon emissions by 2050, they have to find ways to deal with any remaining CO2 produced, such as by heavy industry. Around 90% of the identified storage geologies for carbon dioxide in Europe are shared between Norway and the United Kingdom; all of the designated sites for storage are located in the North Sea.
Sea level variations over geological time scales
Global or eustatic sea level has fluctuated significantly over Earth's history. The main factors affecting sea level are the amount and volume of available water and the shape and volume of the ocean basins. The primary influences on water volume are the temperature of the seawater, which affects density, and the amounts of water retained in other reservoirs like rivers, aquifers, lakes, glaciers, polar ice caps and sea ice. Over geological timescales, changes in the shape of the oceanic basins and in land/sea distribution affect sea level. In addition to eustatic changes, local changes in sea level are caused by tectonic uplift and subsidence.
Submerged offshore pump storage system
The Stored Energy at Sea (StEnSEA) project is a pump storage system designed to store significant quantities of electrical energy offshore. After research and development, it was tested on a model scale in November 2016. It is designed to link in well with offshore wind platforms and their issues caused by electrical production fluctuations. It works by water flowing into a container, at significant pressure, thus driving a turbine. When there is spare electricity the water is pumped out, allowing electricity to be generated at a time of increased need.