Data centers and servers cooled by submerging in the ocean are not a new concept, with companies like Microsoft and others showing off the concept.
Recently, a US startup called Aikido Technologies, which builds windmills on the surface of the sea, has recently decided to also use the windmills as the location of a data center that will be cooled using water from the North Sea by the end of 2026.
The uniqueness of this windmill is that it comes with three feet filled with water to keep it floating, and to prevent it from being blown to the middle of the ocean by the wind, these feet are also chained to the seabed.
According to Aikido Technologies, they also want to house a data center inside each of the windmill's floating legs, and say that each of them can house a data center with a power consumption capacity of 3-4MW, allowing each of these windmills to come with a data center with a power consumption capacity of up to 12MW.
How this cooling works is that the water contained in the buoy will be used to cool the components of the server machine. The hot water will then be cooled by the surrounding seawater, allowing it to be reused to cool the server machine again. In the meantime, the air conditioning machine will be used to cool the parts that are not submerged in water.
The installation of this windmill is also seen to be quite fast. Installation in the North Sea is expected to take less than a week using the flat pack method, and can be integrated into the network within two hours after completion.
The challenge of using this windmill as a power source for a data center is the unpredictable wind flow rate, depending on the season. At times it will provide more than enough energy, but there are also times when the windmill will not produce enough power for the data center's needs.
To overcome this problem, excess energy will be stored in batteries, which will be used for times when the windmill is not functioning optimally. It can also be connected to the power grid on land to continue operation if the battery power is also insufficient.
According to them, the proof of concept of this windmill and data center will be shown for the first time around summer this year, where it will begin to be shown off the coast of Norway.
