How to optimize energy consumption and reduce cooling costs? That's one of the frequently asked questions from companies behind data centers globally. Little by little, new methods are being tested to lower the impact of these structures, and China has an ambitious plan: to build an underwater datacenter .
As reported by PCMag, based on a Reuters report, the Chinese experiment will try to demonstrate if it is a viable alternative to reduce cooling costs . The data center design has been completed and its installation site has also been chosen. All we have to do is get down to business, although it is already known that it will not be available overnight.
The world's first underwater commercial data center will be located off the coast of Hainan Province, an island in southern China. Construction will be carried out by the Highlander maritime technology company and the Hainan government. For its part, Beijing Sinnet, an internet provider firm, will take over operating it when it is ready. It is expected to only start operating in five years .
An underwater data center, China's new bet
Photo by Taylor Vick on Unsplash According to the report, the data center installed underwater will be significantly smaller than a traditional one on the surface. The Chinese project would contemplate the implementation of some 100 data cabinets , although it has not been specified how many servers they would house. According to PCMag calculations, it could be no more than 4,200.
The idea behind this initiative would be to demonstrate that the exposure of the data center to cold sea water would be sufficient to reduce cooling costs and overall energy consumption. Reuters indicates, based on Greenpeace statistics, that 70% of the operating cost of China's data centers corresponds to energy use .
In any case, there is still considerable suspicion regarding the viability of this project. The subsea cooling capacity is not questioned, but rather the stability and reliability of the structure in question . Furthermore, the fact that the construction of this first experiment takes no less than five years implies that there are no great advances thought in the short or medium term.
“I am skeptical about its profitability. The technology for subsea data centers is not yet mature . I am afraid that Internet customers will probably not take it as a first choice, as their main concern is the security and stability of the data infrastructure, “said Yang Zhiyong of state consultancy CCID.
The specialist even put the focus of doubts on the large initial investment cost as a possible impediment to its mass adoption. On the other hand, the Chinese authorities have not mentioned what budget the construction of the subsea data center will have or who will finance it .
Dipping servers to cool them is not a new idea
Although the Chinese project is ambitious as it is a commercial data center, the idea of submerging servers to cool them is not new . Microsoft already experimented with a similar initiative a few years ago, and recently unveiled how it cools its servers using a boiling liquid.
The Redmond corporation does not use water to lower the temperature of its equipment, but a fluorocarbon-based fluid. It is a non-conductive and harmless liquid for hardware that is designed to boil at 50 ° C, and works in a closed-loop system. With this method, Microsoft has been able to reduce the energy consumption of any server by up to 15% .
