- Sea -cooled data centers could cut off energy costs by nearly 90%
- Highlander Digital Technology takes server cooling literally under the sea
- Offshore wind farms are expected to operate 95% of operation sustainable
China pushes on with a plan that sounds more like science fiction than infrastructure development – building underwater data centers.
The move aims to use the natural cooling properties of the sea to reduce the huge energy required by land -based facilities.
While the idea is effective on paper, it raises the question of long -term feasibility, maintenance and the practicality of keeping advanced computer systems under the sea.
Cooling with streams
The move is led by Beijing-based Highlander Digital Technology, who is preparing to implement a new series of submerged computer belts off the Shanghai coast.
These underwater installations are expected to cool servers with high performance using ocean currents rather than the mechanical systems that dominate conventional data centers.
The company claims that this could cut cooling -related energy consumption by approx. 90%.
The project will serve clients, including China Telecom and a state-owned company that focuses on AI tools, which adapts to the government’s wider push for greener infrastructure.
Previous attempts at Hainan Island allegedly showed that this method could save over 122 million kWh of electricity and 105,000 tonnes of water annually.
Most of the energy that drives the Shanghai installation is expected to come from nearby offshore wind farms with projections that as much as 95% of its energy will be lasting.
On the surface, it represents an important step in the global effort to reduce the carbon imprint of digital infrastructure, but the practical challenges are still difficult to ignore.
This is not China’s first experiment, nor is it a whole new concept.
Between 2013 and 2024, Microsoft conducted its own underwater experiments during “Project Natick”, which involved the location of sealed server bellows on the coast of Scotland.
The project showed that the underwater environment could offer a lower error rate, approx. one eighth of what was seen in land -based systems.
Despite these promising results, Microsoft gave up the whole idea in 2024, probably due to the difficulties of hardware upgrades, repairs and accessibility in such a remote setting.
While the Chinese project could mark a new phase in the development of data centers, experts remain cautious.
Some studies suggest that underwater systems may be susceptible to interference or even attacks using sound waves.
Others question the logistics of maintaining colocation provider services or replacing failed equipment without expensive retrieval operations.
Currently, China’s underwater plan shows both ambitions and uncertainty – it can offer a glimpse of the next boundary of sustainable computing, or it can simply highlight the limits of what is convenient when technology meets the deep sea.
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