China has completed the first phase of construction of what it claims is the world's first underwater data center (UDC). Located in Shanghai’s Lin-gang Special Area with a price tag of roughly RMB 1.6 billion ($226 million), it's a significant milestone in the quest for sustainable solutions to the growing energy demands of China’s computing infrastructure.
Powered entirely by wind energy, the initiative has a total power capacity of 24 megawatts. According to the Lin-gang management committee, its completion represents a key breakthrough in incorporating renewable energy into data storage, processing, and distribution.
Beneath the Surface
Traditional land-based data centers run hot and must be kept cool to operate efficiently. Air conditioning systems alone can account for up to 50 percent of total energy consumption.
Lin-gang's UDC solves this problem by submerging servers beneath the surface of the ocean where seawater acts as a natural cooling system, according to Su Yang, general manager of Shanghai Hicloud Technology, one of the contractors on the project. This reduces the energy demand for cooling to less than 10 percent.
The underwater data center uses seawater as a natural cooling system. Illustration: Shanghai Hailanyun Technology
The industry-standard metric for measuring the energy efficiency of a data center is PUE (power usage effectiveness). The UDC’s first phase is designed to achieve a PUE of no more than 1.15, a remarkable goal considering theoretical perfection is 1.0. Meanwhile, China’s national policy requires new data centers to achieve a PUE of less than 1.25 by the end of 2025.