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Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

bbc.com

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Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#61

Post by cbcoutinho »

seszett wrote: post #46
alexghr wrote: post #36

At what point does this become a problem? They're using the naturally cool sea water to regulate the temperature in the container, but that heat needs to go somewhere... it heats the water. If this becomes a popular alternative to classic server farms, at what point does it start to increase the temperature of the sea? I know, the oceans are big, but so is our data.

If my calculation is correct, the total annual electricity production in the world (I used 20 279 PWh) would heat up the oceans (1 347 000 000 km³ of water) by 0,0129°C. It's rather easy to calculate because one calorie is the energy required to heat up one gramme of water by one degree Celsius, the rest is just unit conversions, but I could have messed up anywhere of course. Even if I'm off by a few orders of magnit…

You can't assume that the ocean is perfectly mixed. For example, desalination plants dump highly saline water into the ocean that can have adverse effects on local ecosystems, even though their effect on the entire ocean may be negligible.

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#62

Post by akerro »

seszett wrote: post #46
alexghr wrote: post #36

At what point does this become a problem? They're using the naturally cool sea water to regulate the temperature in the container, but that heat needs to go somewhere... it heats the water. If this becomes a popular alternative to classic server farms, at what point does it start to increase the temperature of the sea? I know, the oceans are big, but so is our data.

If my calculation is correct, the total annual electricity production in the world (I used 20 279 PWh) would heat up the oceans (1 347 000 000 km³ of water) by 0,0129°C. It's rather easy to calculate because one calorie is the energy required to heat up one gramme of water by one degree Celsius, the rest is just unit conversions, but I could have messed up anywhere of course. Even if I'm off by a few orders of magnit…

>(I used 20 279 PWh) would heat up the oceans (1 347 000 000 km³ of water)

Your calculation is stupid because you dont need to heat up whole ocean, heating up small areas it will be butterfly effect, enough to badly affect bigger areas. Look at this:

>As the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rises due to emissions of fossil fuels, more of the gas is dissolving in the ocean. That is lowering the pH of the water, or making it more acidic, which can make it harder for reef-building organisms to construct their hard skeletons.

Minor change in CO2 changed pH of water, which kills organism in wider area.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/160321-coral-ble...

There are also closed seas like Baltic that need over 100 years to fully mix sea water with ocean water, it's much less salty than other seas and warmer, also much more polluted from toxins that were sinked there during and after WW2.

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#63

Post by petre »

alexghr wrote: post #36

At what point does this become a problem? They're using the naturally cool sea water to regulate the temperature in the container, but that heat needs to go somewhere... it heats the water. If this becomes a popular alternative to classic server farms, at what point does it start to increase the temperature of the sea? I know, the oceans are big, but so is our data.

It cools back down when the water evaporates. But it doesn't do the oceans any good anyhow because thea heat also fuels algae blooms.

I doubt it will become popular because it involves waterproofing the enclosures, complicates maintenance staff access, and also carries the risk of water getting in and damaging the equipment.

There are other alternatives to AC. Using a cooling tower is a much better alternative to submerging the whole datacenter.

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#64

Post by Maxion »

brunnsbe wrote: post #32
mariuolo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The closest thing I remember is Google taking over an old paper mill in Finland that used a condenser sunk into a canal connected to the Baltic sea. https://www.wired.com/2012/01/google-finland/ there should be a video with the details here.

There's also a data center in Helsinki, Finland that is cooled by sea water and the waste heat produced is piped via a heat pump into the district heating network. Here's a press release from 2011: http://www.investineu.com/content/atos-builds-world%E2%80%99...

This, it feels like an awful waste to dump the heat straight into the ocean. District heating networks are a very efficient way to heat up a city, and they can be used as a place to dump excess heat. Further, we've now also got district cooling, http://basrec.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/District%20Cool... [PDF warning]

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#65

Post by quietbritishjim »

seszett wrote: post #46
alexghr wrote: post #36

At what point does this become a problem? They're using the naturally cool sea water to regulate the temperature in the container, but that heat needs to go somewhere... it heats the water. If this becomes a popular alternative to classic server farms, at what point does it start to increase the temperature of the sea? I know, the oceans are big, but so is our data.

If my calculation is correct, the total annual electricity production in the world (I used 20 279 PWh) would heat up the oceans (1 347 000 000 km³ of water) by 0,0129°C. It's rather easy to calculate because one calorie is the energy required to heat up one gramme of water by one degree Celsius, the rest is just unit conversions, but I could have messed up anywhere of course. Even if I'm off by a few orders of magnit…

> Even if I'm off by a few orders of magnitude

I'm not saying there is a problem with your calculations, but if you were just one order of magnitude off, then after 10 years that would be 1°C, which is a colossal amount. The main problem with global warming, as I understand it, is that 1 or 2 degrees change to the atmosphere would melt a huge amount of polar ice. I imagine that if the sea were increase in temperature by that amount, given that water has better thermal conductivity than air and that's kinda where the polar ice mostly is, the effects would be at least as bad (?)

Edit: given that some of the heat would dissipate into the atmosphere and sea bed, maybe it would need to be more than one order of magnitude higher to have this effect.

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#66

Post by simon_acca »

0110011 wrote: post #40

Wondering how long it will be until we have cloud data centers in space... Seems like it could be useful to offer a flexible computing infrastructure to small sats and science missions without requiring ground comms.

Actually getting rid of excess energy is a huge problem in space since it's pretty empty: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_Active_Thermal_Cont...

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#67

Post by blablabla123 »

seszett wrote: post #46
alexghr wrote: post #36

At what point does this become a problem? They're using the naturally cool sea water to regulate the temperature in the container, but that heat needs to go somewhere... it heats the water. If this becomes a popular alternative to classic server farms, at what point does it start to increase the temperature of the sea? I know, the oceans are big, but so is our data.

If my calculation is correct, the total annual electricity production in the world (I used 20 279 PWh) would heat up the oceans (1 347 000 000 km³ of water) by 0,0129°C. It's rather easy to calculate because one calorie is the energy required to heat up one gramme of water by one degree Celsius, the rest is just unit conversions, but I could have messed up anywhere of course. Even if I'm off by a few orders of magnit…

Now you can calculate by how much the water level would rise and how many square feet land would be flooded...

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#68

Post by WalterBright »

mpweiher wrote: post #23
cm2187 wrote: post #12

> Additionally because there are no people, we can take all the oxygen and most of the water vapour out of the atmosphere which reduces corrosion, which is a significant problem in data centres First time I hear corrosion is a problem in datacentres. I never noticed any corrosion on any machine at home or work. Does it have to do with the cooling of datacentres?

I think part of it is that even problems that are small/unnoticeable at the individual level become big when multiplied by a huge N. For example, I don't think I've ever had a hard drive fail in ~30 years in computing, well without being dropped that is, yet look at the Backblaze reports: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-benchmark-stats-20...

I have. Including things like the heads falling off and spinning around, grinding everything to junk.

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#69

Post by discodave »

cm2187 wrote: post #12

> Additionally because there are no people, we can take all the oxygen and most of the water vapour out of the atmosphere which reduces corrosion, which is a significant problem in data centres First time I hear corrosion is a problem in datacentres. I never noticed any corrosion on any machine at home or work. Does it have to do with the cooling of datacentres?

Some AWS techs in Oregon from a few years ago have a fun story for you.

Re: Microsoft has sunk a data centre in the sea to investigate energy efficiency

#70

Post by brian_cloutier »

jgtrosh wrote: post #60
brian_cloutier wrote: post #37

> Prof Ian Bitterlin, a data centre consultant for nearly 30 years, is sceptical about the environmental impact of going underwater. > "You just end up with a warmer sea and bigger fish," he says. > And 90% of Europe's data centres are in big cities such as London and Madrid because that is where they are needed. > Microsoft's Ben Cutler insists the warming effect will be minimal - "the water just metres downstream w…

Not an expert either, but this might be a good way to think about it: on land or at sea, the machines produce the same amount of heat. On land, in general, the environment around the machines will be much warmer than the desired temp. Cooling on land is in general an active affair, which has to do with generating and controlling flow of fluid and/or maybe some kind of thermic reaction. Potentially at sea being plunge…

Oh, I'm sure that being in a cold environment and letting it passively cool you is more efficient!

What I'm more unclear on is how small the impact is. It seems very likely to me that throwing the waste heat into the bottom of the ocean has less of an environmental impact than running A/C to suck out the heat and dump it into the air.

However, is the impact really so small that you wouldn't notice it just meters away? That's the part I'm unclear on.

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