Underwater data centre online this year
Underwater data centres use far fewer resources than anything on land.
An underwater data centre could begin operations off the west coast of the US before the end of the year.
Subsea Cloud intends to install its first commercial underwater pod close to Port Angeles, Washington, before the end of 2022, with another deployment planned for the Gulf of Mexico, and a provisional project (Manannán) in the North Sea.
At this point, the goal is to demonstrate the practicality of using the ocean to cool a data centre. Cooling accounts for a significant proportion of most data centres' power consumption.
Subsea claims its underwater data centre modules can slash electricity use and carbon dioxide emissions by 40%. Additionally, the project has the potential to reduce latency by situating data centres closer to metropolitan centres, many of which are close to coastlines. This has the side benefit of boosting data residency.
Other benefits of ocean-based data centres include reduced land use, lower build costs (Subsea claims to be 70% cheaper than competitors, though doesn't back its claims with evidence), scalability and - crucially - zero water use, refigerants or harmful chemicals.
"By placing the data centres subsea, we eliminate the electrically driven cooling which is 40% of the power consumption," says Maxie Reynolds, co-founder of Subsea Cloud.
The Jules Verne deployment at Port Angeles will consist of a single 20-foot pod, comparable to a typical 20-foot shipping container in terms of size and dimensions. There will be enough space inside the pod for around 16 data centre racks, accommodating 800 servers. Additional pods can be added if expansion is needed.
The pod will be submerged to a depth of just over nine metres, and the pod-to-shore link will work at 100Gbps.
In a LinkedIn post, Reynolds said each pod takes 10 weeks to create, test and certify.
"We drastically reduce build out costs (by up to 90% in some cases). We build in house and we design and build based on the principles of subsea engineering."
After being built, tested, and certified, each pod is typically deployed within two weeks.
"If more than 100 pods (about the equivalent of 100MW) are to be deployed, it requires a gradual, scheduled effort, likely taking ~6 months."
In February, Subsea Cloud said that by lowering the demand for electrical cooling, their first 10 pods would aim to offset more than 7,683 tons of CO2 compared to a similar land-based data centre. It added that its data centres would be aimed at the US military, finance, and healthcare sectors.
Subsea Cloud has previously talked about the possibility of locating data centres much, much deeper underwater than these initial trials - up to 300m below sea level, which would massively increase physical security (it is even out of the range of some submarines).
However, the company is starting off at shallower depths, much like Microsoft's Project Natick, which was trialled for two years off the coast of Scotland.
Microsoft's test pod contained 12 racks with 864 servers, and was retrieved from the seabed off the Scottish Orkney islands in 2020.
Unlike the Subsea pods, which normalise pressure between the inside and outside of the pod, Microsoft filled the Project Natick enclosure with nitrogen to act as a pressure vessel.
Chinese firm Highlander also has plans to deploy a subsea data centre off the coastal city of Sanya, on Hainan Island, in the near future.
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