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Microsoft's underwater data centre resurfaces after two years

bbc.co.uk

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

#101

Post by kevincox »

Kydlaw wrote: post #51
angry_octet wrote: post #43

Another example of the journalistic malpractice of not linking to the original articles or data. https://natick.research.microsoft.com/ https://news.microsoft.com/innovation-stories/project-natick... One of the facts left unmentioned is that this was built and operated by Naval, the French state-owned submarine and shipbuilding corporation.

I don't get your point? Why is it that relevant to you?

1. Linking to your sources is a good practice. 2. Their article adds little if any insight over the original article. I would often prefer to see the source and read it instead/additionally.

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

#102

Post by nixgeek »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #63
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 scale is off. Things that affect local ecosystems are cooling multi-gigawatt nuclear reactors with nearby ocean water, you would be lucky if one of these drew a megawatt of power. That said, the physics are "heat is heat". If you put it into the air or you put it directly into the ocean the only way it leaves the planet is by black body radiation. As a result locally heating some seawater nearby has (on a global…

Sure but one thought experiment is what if we put more of our datacenters underwater?

I expect AWS us-east-1 now adds up to over a gigawatt of critical load so if submerged in the ocean off Virginia what would be the effects, and how would those be different from terrestrial datacenters?

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

#103

Post by gowld »

mlyle wrote: post #71
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If you use renewables, you're using heat that is already around on the planet. As long as you don't change planetary albedo, equilibrium temperature is the same. Of course, heating water locally, etc, can cause its own environmental impacts.

"Renewable" refers to energy, not just heat. The sun's energy is be used for other purposes than heat, thankfully.

Growing a 100 trees and chopping them into lumber is less hot than growing 100 trees and burning them.

If all the sun's energy were converted to heat (and not radiated away), we'd be in big trouble. That's what "carbon" pollution is all about -- Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps heat. Reducing albedo is one way to increase tempterature, but directly burning stuff is another way.

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

#104

Post by tedsanders »

revax wrote: post #65
reaperducer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 is basic thermodynamics stuff. Looks like energy used in datacenter in 2018 was around 200TWh. If you use all this energy to heat only the mediterranean sea, you will have a change of temperature of 0.00006°C. I used this calculator https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/specific-heat

FYI, your comment is wildly misleading. Thermal pollution is real and has a wide research literature.

The worry is not that that the average temperature of the oceans will rise. The worry is that the local temperature of the ocean will rise. This is exactly what happens with other forms of thermal pollution. One example studied for decades was California's San Onofre nuclear power generating station. It has been subject to regulations regarding its thermal pollution into the ocean. They built long pipes so that the temperature increase from the cooling water could heat the ocean gradually over a wide area rather than severely in a narrow area. It's the same principle as a CPU heatsink.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_pollution

https://authors.library.caltech.edu/26008/

https://www.worldcat.org/title/ecological-effects-of-thermal...

For what it's worth, I personally found your comment quite distasteful. Instead of trying to understand what you didn't know, you knocked down a straw man and pretended like it was obvious and backed by science.

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

#105

Post by RobRivera »

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,…

I'm sorry but this is such a 'goalpost' movement here that simply takes away a lot of context. The whole point of doing a dc underground is to reduce the hvac energy consumption which has a much larger ecological impact in terms of heat generated, power usage, potential greenhouse gas usage.

The name of the game here is energy efficiency and conservation. Use less power by reducing power distribution loss at scale. Want an even greener solution? Make em nuclear powered like a giant submarine- that way the power generation isn't creating a heavg ecological impact.

I think your posing of these questions genuinely fail to appreciate this for what it is, a successful proof of concept that will permit a step toward a greener future.

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

#106

Post by PopeDotNinja »

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…

You could have a solar powered HVAC system that captures the condensed water, and then submerge the thing you’re trying to cool in that water!

P.S. am not HVAC wizard.

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

#107

Post by [deleted] »

falcolas wrote: post #84
ChuckMcM wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scale is off. Things that affect local ecosystems are cooling multi-gigawatt nuclear reactors with nearby ocean water, you would be lucky if one of these drew a megawatt of power. That said, the physics are "heat is heat". If you put it into the air or you put it directly into the ocean the only way it leaves the planet is by black body radiation. As a result locally heating some seawater nearby has (on a global…

> the only way it leaves the planet is by black body radiation But, if you're heating the oceans, you're putting an entire other mass (the atmosphere) between yourself and space. So you're heating the water, the water is heating the atmosphere, and the atmosphere is radiating that into space. It's adding a step to the overall cooling process.

[deleted]

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

#108

Post by gowld »

jerf wrote: post #69
jimktrains2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes heat is distributed instantaneously, which it is not. There will definitely be local affects. The question is if those will harm or collapse native habitats.

There's quite a lot of ocean that doesn't hardly have a "native habitat". Most ocean doesn't look like a coral reef, most ocean looks like water sitting on top of dirt. Unfortunately, the living parts of oceans are also the parts that tend to be easy to get to, and putting stuff farther away will be more expensive. But careful placement may be able to mitigate that. It is still ultimately a 3D environment where the v…

Our 2D intuition leads back on track though, since 2D (or really 1D, or whatever fractal dumention represents thecoastliine) is almost certainly where data centers will get built, not on the middle of the pacific.

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

#110

Post by abfan1127 »

shawkinaw wrote: post #64
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…

> And HVAC systems create far more waste heat than they do cooling, so this passive cooling will just be moving the source heat to the water, not dumping extra waste heat as well. Where do you get that idea? A typical EER 12 air conditioner will move 3.5x the heat energy that it consumes (COP = 3.5) [0]. [0] https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/cop-eer-d_409.html

For every 3.5 BTU moved, it consumes 1 BTU. That BTU goes somewhere. Heat in the inductor coils soaks into the environment, etc.
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