China to launch commercial underwater data center — facility expected to consume 90% less power for cooling
Chinese company Highlander is building a server pod near Shanghai, where it will be submerged underwater to reduce the power consumption used by the facility for cooling. According to the South China Morning Post, Highlander is expected to sink the underwater pods in October. The servers will operate commercially, with state-owned institutions like China Telecom…
Chinese company Highlander is building a server pod near Shanghai, where it will be submerged underwater to reduce the power consumption used by the facility for cooling. According to the South China Morning Post, Highlander is expected to sink the underwater pods in October. The servers will operate commercially, with state-owned institutions like China Telecom being among the first customers.
This isn’t the first underwater data center project; Microsoft concluded its own experiment off the coast of Scotland in 2024. Although Microsoft said that it has learned a lot from the project, it did not proceed with a commercial deployment of the system.
There are also significant challenges that Highlander had to overcome. “The actual completion of the underwater data center involved greater construction challenges than initially expected,” said Engineer Zhou Jun, who worked at the Shanghai project.
Although placing data centers underwater will help reduce their power consumption, some experts are concerned about the effects of ocean warming due to continuous heat output. There hasn’t been enough research on this, University of Hull Marine Ecologies Andrew Want told SCMP.
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