Now you’re talkin!

At the deployment site, a remotely operated vehicle retrieved a cable containing the fiber optic and power wiring from the seafloor and brought it to the surface where it was checked and attached to the datacenter, and the datacenter powered on.

Sadly, it sounds like power is coming from the shore.

Underwater datacenters could also serve as anchor tenants for marine renewable energy such as offshore wind farms or banks of tidal turbines, allowing the two industries to evolve in lockstep.

But I think this is their plan for energy in the future.

Oh no doubt. It makes a great deal of sense.

I’m just curious what the actual heat output is (avg, min, max, in vs out), and what the environmental impact is.

Will there be biofouling because the warm seawater is desirable?

Will it even be viable offshore from places like Miami?

Can it produce too much heat for the local environment? Probably not one, but what about after this scale-up with renewables like the article mentions?

At what scale would it begin to disrupt things like the AMOC?

The system pipes seawater directly through the radiators on the back of each of the 12 server racks and back out into the ocean.

How much is it going to heat the local area? Along with disk and rack design testing, are they also testing how this thing affects wildlife?

The appeal is understandable: proximity to population centers, temperature, security, scaling with renewable tech, etc.

I wonder if international waters is their end goal. Self-reliant, off-grid data centers that only abide by MS rules.

2min 30sec is too long? Tell me it was the YT ads not 2m30s.

But I did appreciate the reddit irony.

How did I miss this?! S17E1, tonight’s HW assignment. Thank you!