Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 386 posts

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#31

Post by Etheryte »

jacquesm wrote: post #10

Why heat the oceans indirectly when you can just place the heatsource directly in them? Much less chance of losing precious ergs. Seriously though, what is the direct ecological impact of doing this at scale, would the local increase in temperature have an immediate effect on the life around it? If so how much of an impact? What about the effect on surface life and life in intermediary layers of the water? After all,…

The orders of magnitude are wildly different, even at large server farm scale. According to some estimates, capturing merely ~0.3% of the available energy from the Gulf Stream would be enough to supply all of Florida with electricity [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_current_power#Energy_po...

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#32

Post by closeparen »

reaperducer wrote: post #22
slaymaker1907 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I remember, the impact was pretty minimal. Water has a huge capacity for heat so the temperature was elevated only when very close to the data center.

the impact was pretty minimal We used to say that about plastics in the ocean. And landfills. And light pollution. And noise pollution. And space junk. And on and on and on. Heck, not that many decades ago there were responsible people who thought that air pollution was no big deal because there's plenty of air, and it's just fine if California allows rich car collectors to keep buying leaded gasoline long after othe…

The impact of cooling a building on the surface is definitely higher.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#33

Post by tbabb »

reaperducer wrote: post #22
slaymaker1907 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I remember, the impact was pretty minimal. Water has a huge capacity for heat so the temperature was elevated only when very close to the data center.

the impact was pretty minimal We used to say that about plastics in the ocean. And landfills. And light pollution. And noise pollution. And space junk. And on and on and on. Heck, not that many decades ago there were responsible people who thought that air pollution was no big deal because there's plenty of air, and it's just fine if California allows rich car collectors to keep buying leaded gasoline long after othe…

This reads like you have not done any calculation to determine whether the entire ocean can be heated by any plausible number of datacenters or not.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#34

Post by emteycz »

reaperducer wrote: post #22
slaymaker1907 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I remember, the impact was pretty minimal. Water has a huge capacity for heat so the temperature was elevated only when very close to the data center.

the impact was pretty minimal We used to say that about plastics in the ocean. And landfills. And light pollution. And noise pollution. And space junk. And on and on and on. Heck, not that many decades ago there were responsible people who thought that air pollution was no big deal because there's plenty of air, and it's just fine if California allows rich car collectors to keep buying leaded gasoline long after othe…

There is a difference between understanding of different fields of science. We understand temperature in large bodies pretty well - and we know that it's nearly impossible to sink that many servers to do anything.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#35

Post by Shivetya »

NathanKP wrote: post #21
jacquesm wrote: post #10

Why heat the oceans indirectly when you can just place the heatsource directly in them? Much less chance of losing precious ergs. Seriously though, what is the direct ecological impact of doing this at scale, would the local increase in temperature have an immediate effect on the life around it? If so how much of an impact? What about the effect on surface life and life in intermediary layers of the water? After all,…

An HVAC system above ground would generate far more heat. The advantage of sinking the data center would appear to be that it can function with passive cooling from the surrounding water only, no HVAC. This means less electricity consumption (meaning less energy generation required, and fewer resulting greenhouse gasses). And HVAC systems create far more waste heat than they do cooling, so this passive cooling will j…

Well they why not create artificial bodies of water and just keep our data centers there? How much water is sufficient for the cooling cycle to not require additional energy? How much water will need to be added to such pools to deal with evaporation?

I think on a smaller scale test with an artificial pool would provide some solid answers. We could even put solar panels across the surface to limit wind and solar evaporation effects

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#36

Post by shuntress »

Etheryte wrote: post #20
endtime wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the surface were that hot, would sea creatures still want to live on it? I have no idea what their range of tolerance is, but I'd assume that they're well adapted for living on relatively cool rocks. And if it's not that hot, then it seems like there's not a cooling problem. (To be clear, I'm speculating without any real knowledge of this subject, and welcome the inevitable corrections.)

The ocean is host to a very wide number of creatures and bacteria, some live in arctic cold waters, others on volcanic vents, and every range in between. There's a good saying for this, roughly translated, that nature doesn't love an empty spot — if one type of plant or bacteria won't live in an area, someone else will quickly settle in.

I am familiar with that sentiment expressed through the phrase "nature abhors a vacuum"

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#37

Post by StavrosK »

NathanKP wrote: post #21
jacquesm wrote: post #10

Why heat the oceans indirectly when you can just place the heatsource directly in them? Much less chance of losing precious ergs. Seriously though, what is the direct ecological impact of doing this at scale, would the local increase in temperature have an immediate effect on the life around it? If so how much of an impact? What about the effect on surface life and life in intermediary layers of the water? After all,…

An HVAC system above ground would generate far more heat. The advantage of sinking the data center would appear to be that it can function with passive cooling from the surrounding water only, no HVAC. This means less electricity consumption (meaning less energy generation required, and fewer resulting greenhouse gasses). And HVAC systems create far more waste heat than they do cooling, so this passive cooling will j…

The issue is CO2, though, not heat per se. Yes, the two are correlated, but if you use renewables to power your things, it doesn't really matter how much heat you generate.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#39

Post by uluyol »

NathanKP wrote: post #21
jacquesm wrote: post #10

Why heat the oceans indirectly when you can just place the heatsource directly in them? Much less chance of losing precious ergs. Seriously though, what is the direct ecological impact of doing this at scale, would the local increase in temperature have an immediate effect on the life around it? If so how much of an impact? What about the effect on surface life and life in intermediary layers of the water? After all,…

An HVAC system above ground would generate far more heat. The advantage of sinking the data center would appear to be that it can function with passive cooling from the surrounding water only, no HVAC. This means less electricity consumption (meaning less energy generation required, and fewer resulting greenhouse gasses). And HVAC systems create far more waste heat than they do cooling, so this passive cooling will j…

I think the question is what is the local impact of the temperature increase? It would be good to know if it harms certain types of ecosystems ahead of time rather than after the fact.

It's also possible that a direct increase in ocean temperature has undesirable knock-on effects that don't take place if you operate on land.

Re: Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

#40

Post by JumpCrisscross »

StavrosK wrote: post #37
NathanKP wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An HVAC system above ground would generate far more heat. The advantage of sinking the data center would appear to be that it can function with passive cooling from the surrounding water only, no HVAC. This means less electricity consumption (meaning less energy generation required, and fewer resulting greenhouse gasses). And HVAC systems create far more waste heat than they do cooling, so this passive cooling will j…

The issue is CO2, though, not heat per se. Yes, the two are correlated, but if you use renewables to power your things, it doesn't really matter how much heat you generate. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

> it doesn't really matter how much heat you generate

Doesn’t matter is strong. It won’t in the short term. But as we continue increasing our energy use as a species, the simple thermal problem of waste-heat management will certainly surface.

Post reply on HN