251–260 of 386 posts
It seems an additional hurdle is anti-fouling. Those barnacles and algae act as an insulator, making the cold-water cooling advantage less and less of an advantage.
Is that really still an issue? From my understanding, it's sort of a solved problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AdW030xQB4
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That's faulty. Solar installations change the albedo of the planet. That's not a problem if the fraction is a very small one and it is spread out. But if it is concentrated or relatively large it certainly could have an effect.
> Solar installations change the albedo of the planet They do. And so does every single thing we build that's exposed to the outside - bulding, cars, even you when you are out and about. The effect is minuscule unless we are turning the planet into Coruscant or this is a gray goo scenario.
Oceans warming up is a big thing, and local effects can be substantial even if global average change is negligible.
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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?
From a total energy gain/loss it doesn't change anything. Heat generated on planet diffuses into the ocean (the largest heat sink) and radiates into space at a (relatively[1]) fixed rate. Given the mechanics, the overall ratio of heat in the atmosphere vs heat in the oceans is fixed by the Rtheta of the atmosphere/ocean boundary. If the atmosphere gets warmer, more heat is transferred. If the atmosphere is colder les…
Thank you, it is precisely that which I was wondering about.
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Isn't increasing the albedo cooling the planet down?
Yes, an increase in reflectivity would cool the planet down. But solar panels actually absorb a lot more than they reflect (they would have to). The ideal solar panel would be utterly black.
The thing is that if putting data centers underwater solves the cooling problem, all the heat produced is wasted, so it this really a good solution?
That's why you don't see it...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot%27s_theorem_(thermodyna...
The thing is that if putting data centers underwater solves the cooling problem, all the heat produced is wasted, so it this really a good solution?
Heat is awfully hard to transfer in the first place, especially when it's not even that hot. It's handy if you can put your data center underneath a swimming pool, for example. But I'm not aware of any large-scale heat recovery projects from data centers. Data centers generally spend extra energy to remove the heat... But honestly who cares if your power comes from renewables in the first place -- solar and wind? It…
Here's a source (in Danish). Wind energy in -> 25 MW/h of heat out (to heat up 12.000 houses):
https://www.computerworld.dk/art/252732/facebook-vores-data-...
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There's probably an internal heat exchanger that they pump seawater through. This article says they pump seawater through heat exchangers on each rack (and presumably shows the piping): https://news.microsoft.com/features/under-the-sea-microsoft-...
Seems kind of strange to put the whole thing underwater if they're going to pump seawater through internal heat exchangers. At that point there's not a lot of difference between putting the "submarine" underwater and leaving it out of -- but near to -- the water and pumping seawater through the same exchangers. With the added benefit of people being able to access things if something goes wrong.
- there are issues with using water for heat exchange and that affecting flora/fauna. maybe the impact can be spread out more at the bottom of the ocean than for on shore locations
- pumping water all the way on to land and back out can take a lot of energy (water is heavy)
- coastal land is generally expensive, certainly more than seafloor which is free(?)
- coastal land is subject to storm surge in a way that deep seafloor is not
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Their public statements so far indicate that, on the prototype, essentially nothing went wrong in a couple of years (a small number of board failures). On the seafloor, they get constant low temperature water with ~0 external pipe and no head to pump against, so it might not obviously be better to have access.
What’s different about the hardware that they’re seeing failure rates that low?
The thing is that if putting data centers underwater solves the cooling problem, all the heat produced is wasted, so it this really a good solution?
That's the cruel part of the thermodynamics. The waste heat here is not hot enough so it's really difficult for the recovery effort to reach a reasonable efficiency economically. That's why you don't see it... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot%27s_theorem_(thermodyna...
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You'd have to pump loads of water for it then? to fill the pool and replace what is lost to 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 " If it's artificial pool you'd need evaporation to cool it.
Do you not consider lake Powell to be an artificial body of water?