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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

#131

Post by pavanky »

gpm wrote: post #114
mlyle wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way to put this is it puts 130% of the source heat out into the environment.

No, it's way worse than that. At the location of the hvac it puts 130% of the source heat into the environment. But 30% of that heat put into the environment came from electricity generated in a power plant. Power plants are typically less than 50% efficient, so it put's out as much heat into the environment at the source of the electricity. Bumping the value to 160% (130% + 30%). However waste heat is a small fracti…

Isnt this assuming coal / gas powerplants ?

Wouldnt solar / Wind have a smaller CO2 foot print and hydro electric be more efficient ?

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

#132

Post by badRNG »

ses1984 wrote: post #118
badRNG wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between 2 years and 5 is quite significant for server runtime above water. This argument of diminishing returns would hold better for placing it 1 year rather than 2, 9 months rather than 12, etc. If the concern is that you'd see significant failure after 5 (which is likely) which could undercut your future plans, I could understand cutting the plan short.

It seems reasonable to apply Bayes theorem. If the failure rate underwater after 2 years is less than normal..

From my anecdotal experience working in data centers early in my career, you really don't really know if your failure rate for a specific type of drive/server is atypical for quite some time. This information is critical for many businesses, as choosing which drive or which architecture model can have profound cost implications.

It's quite possible that failures at the 5 year mark wont maintain a proportionate ratio with failures at the 2 year mark when compared to control. Maybe drive "A" tends to have an unacceptably high failure rate only after "X" hours of up-time.

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

#133

Post by oh_sigh »

ramon wrote: post #116

I don't like the idea since raising water temperatures affects life in the ocean like coral reefs.

Not many coral reefs off of Orkney.There's Lophelia pertusa but that only grows at > 100m depth, whereas this data center was placed at ~30m.

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

#134

Post by calibas »

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.

Especially scummy when they've also broken the functionality of the back button and all the links are to other BBC articles.

It's like the main function of the site is to trap you.

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

#135

Post by mc32 »

nexuist wrote: post #129
RobRivera wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. W…

I don't think jacquesm is off the mark in asking these questions, especially: > what is the direct ecological impact of doing this at scale What is the impact on sea creatures if we put these giant heated cylinders in their territory? Is there any impact? I really doubt we have the answers yet. > at scale ...also implies that there will be more than one. So if one heat cylinder doesn't do anything, what about 10? 100…

There are hot thermal vents and underwater volcanoes throughout the oceans. Creatures adapt. The oceans are huge. Yes, if they place them in ecologically fragile environments that would be a problem —the solution is put them offshore where they don’t bother anything.

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

#136

Post by cedex12 »

numpad0 wrote: post #96
gzu wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need underwater, seaborne, or subsurface nuclear power plants. Radiation release is contained to within the largest stratum available on the Earth: ocean and rock. Anything avoiding our thin atmosphere is a win.

We need NPT dropped, that’s all it takes I think(given everyone can still be nice after which is a big if)

the "non-proliferation treaty" ?

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

#137

Post by mensetmanusman »

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…

saying ‘at scale’ is being unclear, because it seems to be implying that we should consider what would happen if we put every data center today underwater in the same spot, which is what no one is thinking of doing...

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

#138

Post by gpm »

mlyle wrote: post #130
gpm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's way worse than that. At the location of the hvac it puts 130% of the source heat into the environment. But 30% of that heat put into the environment came from electricity generated in a power plant. Power plants are typically less than 50% efficient, so it put's out as much heat into the environment at the source of the electricity. Bumping the value to 160% (130% + 30%). However waste heat is a small fracti…

Fair points. IMO, the 460% metric is a bit of a wacky number, though, because of not counting the carbon and efficiency involved in the original 100%. Assuming the 100% comes from the same power source, it's still only 25-30% "worse". Also I think you're a bit pessimistic about modern power plant efficiency-- combined cycle plants do better than 50%, and that's before we're considering any benefit from renewables.

> Assuming the 100% comes from the same power source, it's still only 25-30% "worse".

Fair point, I guess my argument makes more sense if we were discussing moving naturally occurring heat out (i.e. household ac) than with respect to cooling a datacenter.

Nitpicking the numbers used in the estimate... is probably not worth it. Every bit of it is a very rough order of magnitude number. If you're somewhere with 95% renewable energy it should be an order of magnitude better, if you're somewhere where energy production is dominated by an inefficient coal plant it should be an order of magnitude worse.

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

#139

Post by andrewnicolalde »

calibas wrote: post #134
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.

Especially scummy when they've also broken the functionality of the back button and all the links are to other BBC articles. It's like the main function of the site is to trap you.

If you're in the US like I am, I think it's because the BBC redirects all non-UK visitors to BBC.com, and so when you hit the back button from BBC.com you get sent back to BBC.co.uk which in turn redirects you to BBC.com. It gets on my nerves too.

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

#140

Post by ramon »

AlanSE wrote: post #122
ramon wrote: post #116

I don't like the idea since raising water temperatures affects life in the ocean like coral reefs.

This has been covered again and again in other comments. Thermal power plants dump heat into oceans today. The data center is much more efficient than a counterpart on land. Ocean life and coral reefs are in danger due to temperature rise as a part of climate change. Energy efficiency helps reduce that temperature rise.

No, actually there has been already many studies that there's no turning back on climate change. Even going all electric energy it's not going to do much for climate change, there's no turning back on this aspect at all.
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