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Microsoft wants to design more efficient data centers using materials that allow electricity to flow with zero resistance. If these new materials, called high-temperature superconductors, can make it to market, Microsoft thinks it could be a game changer for how data centers and the energy infrastructure they connect to are built.
Tech companies are facing backlash over how much power generative AI demands, delays connecting to power grids that lack the infrastructure to meet those demands, and the impact construction of new data centers has on local residents. High-temperature superconductors (HTS) could potentially shrink the amount of space needed for a data center and the transmission lines feeding it power.
“Microsoft is exploring how this technology could make electrical grids stronger and reduce the impact data centers have on nearby communities,” Microsoft GM of Global Infrastructure Marketing Alistair Speirs wrote in a blog published today.
“The future data center will be superconducting”
Today’s centers — and most of our energy infrastructure — rely on old-school copper wires, which conduct electricity pretty efficiently. HTS cables, however, can move an electrical current with zero resistance, slashing the amount of energy lost in the process. It also allows for cables that are lighter and more compact. You’ll already find HTS in MRI machines, and more recently used in short stretches for power lines in dense metropolitan areas including Paris and Chicago.
So far, though, their use has been limited in part because HTS cables have been more complicated and expensive to use in energy systems than copper cables. To reach zero resistance, the HTS would need to be cooled to very low temperatures — likely using liquid nitrogen. And the HTS “tape” that forms the basis of superconducting cables is typically made with rare-earth barium copper oxide material. While a superconducting cable only requires a small amount of rare-earth material, the supply chain for the rare earth element is still largely concentrated in China. A bigger challenge, experts tell The Verge, will be increasing the manufacturing capacity for this tape enough for it to be affordable.
That’s starting to change as a result of the power demands of generative AI. In recent years, tech companies have fueled research into the development of a nuclear fusion power plant, long considered the holy grail of clean energy. Much of the HTS tape manufactured today goes toward fusion research, and growth in that department has managed to lower costs for the material.
“That actually helped the supply chain and manufacturer variety, and even some of the costing of HTS … for us to, like, oh, ‘Well, let’s think about that. Now things have changed a little bit,’” says Husam Alissa, director of systems technology at Microsoft.
Microsoft is primarily interested in using HTS in two ways, Alissa tells The Verge. Inside a data center, smaller cables would allow for more flexibility in how the electrical rooms and racks of hardware are laid out. With funding from Microsoft, Massachusetts-based superconducting company VEIR demonstrated last year that HTS cables at a data center could deliver the same amount of power with about a 10x reduction in cable dimension and weight compared to conventional alternatives.
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