China dives into world’s first wind-powered undersea data center

The project is environmentally sustainable in other ways. More than 95 percent of electricity comes from offshore wind turbines. Overall, the designers estimate that this reduces energy consumption by 22.8 percent. Huang Dinan, president of Shinergy Group, one of the project contractors, noted that the East China Sea provides unique offshore wind resources with more than 3,000 hours of annual use. Land use is reduced by more than 90%, a major factor in dense coastal cities like Shanghai, and the need for fresh water is completely eliminated.

From east to west

The UDC is not an isolated effort. As part of a broader national strategy in ChinaShanghai aims to become a global center for scientific and technological innovation by growing its cloud computing industry to more than CNY200 billion (about US$28.25 billion) by 2027.

This initiative also complements – and perhaps offers an alternative – the mega-project “East Data, West Computing”, launched in 2022. This project seeks to build data centers in China’s less developed western regions to process data generated by coastal economic centers to the east. Lin-gang’s UDC, on the other hand, processes data close to where it is generated, while using marine resources to mitigate negative environmental impacts.

Winds of change

UDC’s 24 MW capacity is just the beginning. During the project announcement, major contractors, including Shanghai Hicloud Technology, Shenergy Group, the Shanghai branch of China Telecom and INESA, signed a new agreement to launch another offshore wind UDC project with a more ambitious target: 500 MW.

However, moving from proof-of-concept projects to large-scale application presents significant challenges. “The UDC construction is still in its early stage,” warned Wang Shifeng, president of Third Harbor Engineering, another company involved in the current project. Wang stressed that for wider deployment, optimization of operation and maintenance, as well as technological reliability, must first be achieved.

This story originally appeared on WIRED in Spanish It was translated from Spanish.