China Dives in on the World’s First Wind-Powered Undersea Data Center
The project is environmentally sustainable in other ways. More than 95 percent of its electricity comes from offshore wind turbines. Overall, the designers estimate that this reduces energy consumption by 22.8 percent. Huang Dinan, president of Shenergy Group, another of the project's contractors, noted that the East China Sea offers unique offshore wind resources with more than 3,000 hours of annual use. Land use is reduced by more than 90 percent, an important factor in densely populated 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 wider national strategy in ChinaShanghai aims to become a global center of scientific and technological innovation by growing its cloud computing industry to more than RMB 200 billion (about $28.25 billion) by 2027.
This initiative also complements – and perhaps offers an alternative to – the megaproject “East Data, West Computing”, which was launched in 2022. That project seeks to build data centers in the less developed, western regions of China 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 reduce negative environmental impacts.
The Winds of Change
The 24 megawatt capacity of the UDC is just the beginning. During the announcement for the project, the main contractors, including Shanghai Hicloud Technology, Shenergy Group, the Shanghai branch of China Telecom and INESA, signed a new agreement to launch another offshore wind-powered UDC project with a much more ambitious goal: 500 megawatts.
However, the transition from proof-of-concept projects to large-scale application presents significant challenges. “UDC construction is still in its early stages,” warned Wang Shifeng, president of Third Harbor Engineering, another company involved in the current project. Wang emphasized that for wider deployment, operation and maintenance optimization, as well as technological reliability, must be achieved first.
This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.
