China Dives in on the World’s First Wind-Powered Undersea Data Center
The project is environmentally sustainable in other respects. More than 95 percent of its electricity comes from offshore wind turbines. Overall, designers estimate this reduces energy consumption by 22.8 percent. Huang Dinan, chairman 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 usage. Land use is reduced by more than 90 percent, a major factor in densely populated coastal cities like Shanghai, and the need for fresh water is entirely eliminated.
From East to West
The UDC is not an isolated effort. As part of a broader national strategy in China, Shanghai aims to become a global center of science and technology innovation by growing its cloud computing industry to more than 200 billion RMB (about $28.25 billion) by 2027.
This initiative also complements – and perhaps offers an alternative – the “East Data, West Computing” megaproject, launched in 2022. This project aims to build data centers in China’s less developed western regions to process data generated by coastal economic centers in the east. The Lin-gang UDC, meanwhile, processes data close to where it is generated, while using marine resources to mitigate negative environmental impacts.
The wind of change
The UDC’s 24-megawatt capacity is just the beginning. When the project was announced, key contractors including Shanghai Hicloud Technology, Shenergy Group, the Shanghai branch of China Telecom and INESA signed a new agreement to launch another UDC offshore wind project with a much more ambitious target: 500 megawatts.
However, transitioning proof-of-concept projects to large-scale applications presents significant challenges. “The construction of the UDC is still in its early stages,” warned Wang Shifeng, president of Third Harbor Engineering, another company involved in the ongoing project. Wang stressed that for wider deployment, optimization of operation and maintenance, as well as technological reliability, must be achieved first.
This story was originally published on WIRED en Español and was translated from Spanish.
