71–80 of 397 posts
There is precedent. In Seattle there's the old "steam plant" which piped steam to many local buildings to heat them in winter.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
That is assuming that all the electricity produced on Earth is used to heat the oceans, which is not realistic. Oceanic datacenters are not likely to ever amount to more than a few percent (and even that is unlikely) of the total human electric consumption.
For reference, apparently datacenters used 416 TWh in 2015, which is 0,002% of the total electricity usage.
That's why I'm confident that there is a lot of margin in my calculation.
For example, if you had a underwater data center that sat in the middle of the atlantic ocean in between new york and london, you could do some serious trading with that capability.
Power it with offshore windmills, and you really only need a network connection.
Great idea though, using water to cool your datacenter and leaving all the oxygen out.
I don't understand why not locating it in a city in a cold climate and using the waste heat to heat the city buildings? There is precedent. In Seattle there's the old "steam plant" which piped steam to many local buildings to heat them in winter.
About ten years ago, before working at Amazon, my last job involved building a datacenter in Leiden, the Netherlands. There the city has a municipal heat exchange program and we could also vent the excess heat to be used for heating water.
Modern data centers, especially for Cloud services, are really really really big though ... so big that they have specialized real estate and power requirements. The locations where you can get that much power, and that much space, tend to be outer sub-urban or quite remote. In those locations, there are few consumers for excess heat so more effort goes into reclaiming the energy loss through other means.
Putting your datacenter in international waters, without laws or regulations, hidden from the world. Such a great way to do things without people knowing, or having people do things about it. Power it with offshore windmills, and you really only need a network connection. Great idea though, using water to cool your datacenter and leaving all the oxygen out.
The MSFT Datacenter is a vessel under law, if they don’t want to fly it under a flag they’ll have to essentially abandon it and then salvage laws come into play.
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.
All the big power plants use rivers for cooling. It doesn't seem to be a terribly big problem unless there is a drought.
Putting your datacenter in international waters, without laws or regulations, hidden from the world. Such a great way to do things without people knowing, or having people do things about it. Power it with offshore windmills, and you really only need a network connection. Great idea though, using water to cool your datacenter and leaving all the oxygen out.
As for “without laws” google still follows European laws even if my search happens to be handled on an American or British machine. You obey the laws where you operate not where your server is located.
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.