Startup Builds Prototype For Floating Data Center

1sockchuck writes: California startup Nautilus Data Technologies has developed a floating data center that it says can dramatically slash the cost of cooling servers. The company's data barge is being tested near San Francisco, and represents the latest chapter in a long-running effort to develop a water-based data center. Google kicked things off with a 2008 patent for a sea-going data center that would be powered and cooled by waves, conjuring visions of offshore data havens. Google never built it, but IDS soon launched its own effort to convert old Navy vessels into "data ships" before going bankrupt. Nautilus is using barges moored at piers, which allows it to use bay water in its cooling system,eliminating the need for CRAC units and chillers. The company says its offering may benefit from the growing focus on data centers' water use amid California's drought.

Comments

Good/Bad/Ugly

[Anonymous Coward]

Good: more efficient cooling, which is better for the environment

Bad: ... but not if power is supplied by inefficient on-board generation

Ugly: Piracy

Re:Good/Bad/Ugly

[bobbied]

Good: more efficient cooling, which is better for the environment

Bad: ... but not if power is supplied by inefficient on-board generation

Ugly: Piracy

Serious problem... Redundant high speed Data connections...

Re:Good/Bad/Ugly

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think any of these plans have had the ship/barge far out at sea, they were almost always moored at a pier next to a major metropolitan area which would make multiple redundant connections quite feasible. But even if they were put far out to sea having multiple data connections wouldn't necessary be out of the question. The globe is crisscrossed by hundreds of high speed underwater fiber cables. In strategic locations companies could create connection points where one or more cables could be tied into, and if any of the several satellite internet networks being planned gets off of the ground they could tie into them as well possibly serving as routing point to increase network traffic efficiency.

Re:Good/Bad/Ugly

[ShanghaiBill]

Bad: ... but not if power is supplied by inefficient on-board generation

The ships are moored to a pier, and using shore based power. Burning bunker fuel to generate electricity is not only inefficient, but at least in SF is illegal. Bunker fuel produces filthy high sulfur smoke, and the boilers are required to be shut down as soon as a ship is moored.

Re:Good/Bad/Ugly

[Applehu Akbar]

California could use the waste heat from the servers for desalination.

Re: Good/Bad/Ugly

[WindBourne]

Not high enough. Far better to use waste heat from power plants to drive desalination

Re: Good/Bad/Ugly

[ShanghaiBill]

Far better to use waste heat from power plants to drive desalination

Even better would be to forget about desalination, and just stop paying subsidies to people growing rice in the desert.

Re:Good/Bad/Ugly

[currently_awake]

Cost of moorage, cost of running pumps to circulate sea water through your cooling system, cost of maintaining a boat, cost of maintaining the high speed data network to a boat. The only way this is cheaper is if you can't find cheap land near enough to the ocean to allow a pair of pipes to be run for cooling.

Re:Good/Bad/Ugly

[dbIII]

Yacht people sometimes describe them as holes in the water to pour money into.

Re:Good/Bad/Ugly

[dbIII]

Offtopic, and a bit more serious, but bouys on shafts using wave power make vastly more sense.
http://www.carnegiewave.com/projects/perth-project.html
The force of the waves pumps water and that can drive desalination as well as run generators.

Re: Good/Bad/Ugly

[dbIII]

Both may be necessary. At some point those making the decisions completely forgot that they should pay attention to reality and that there would by dry years every now and again just like through all of written history.

Re: Good/Bad/Ugly

[WindBourne]

In fact, for AGW, we are supposed to see harder and longer droughts . the best thing is for America to prepare. With the waste heat from so many thermal power plants within 20 miles of the ocean, we are foolish to not use these.

Re: Good/Bad/Ugly

[ShanghaiBill]

With the waste heat from so many thermal power plants within 20 miles of the ocean, we are foolish to not use these.

Modern desalination plants use reverse osmosis, driven by electric pumps, which have no use for "waste heat". Low grade heat could be used for the first stage in distillation, but distillation would still be prohibitively expensive.

Re: Good/Bad/Ugly

[WindBourne]

LOL.
RO is used, but it is expensive. The reason why it is preferred is that it can be located anywhere and power lines ran to it. Now, if you have a power plant close to the ocean, esp if it is being used for cooling purposes, then desalination is next to NOTHING to do. Basically, it uses waste energy to create clean water. As such, it is NOT expensive, just limited in where it can operate.

Re: Good/Bad/Ugly

[WindBourne]

BTW, here is some information for you.
Basically, RO is expensive, but pushed by the wrong ppl. Thermal desalination using waste heat saves money.

Re:Good/Bad/Ugly

[slashdotwannabe]

Moor it in San Francisco Bay, not dockside. Running power and network submarine cables a thousand yards off shore -- even redundant cables -- would be relatively cheap.... peanuts even, compared to the cost of Bay Area real estate.

Re: Good/Bad/Ugly

[dbIII]

The problem is that you need shitloads of waste heat well over the boiling point in atmosphere - which is typically not wasted in such quantities. Everything that doesn't have a long and involved heat exchange system, using the boiler outlet water to do a LOT of preheating of the inlet water is either getting very old or is tiny - plus having to be coastal limits things a bit, so while there may be a few sites where it is possible they are going to be rare. There's even some places (eg. Liddell power station) where not only is the waste heat recovered as mush as possible but a bit of solar heating is added on top before it goes into the boiler to cut down on fuel use.
There's co-generation with stuff like burning methane from garbage, sewage etc with no boiler to heat, but projects like that are using their waste heat for stuff like warm water for aquaculture because they don't have the sort of waste heat to evaporate a lot of water - even at atmospheric pressure.
Gas turbines often have a bit of heat that's not recovered but you would need a lot of them at one site for this sort of thing, so there's an option for a new site designed for those two purposes.
So while it is far cheaper to use waste heat of you can get it there's not dependable amounts of it about for a total solution, and it's pretty expensive if you are burning stuff for the thermal desalination instead of getting the heat cheap as a by-product.

Thus if cheap heat is not available the opportunities shift to cheap mechanical energy to pump some pressure behind those membranes:
http://www.carnegiewave.com/projects/perth-project.html

"growing focus on data centers' water use"

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> growing focus on data centers' water use amid California's drought

Um...what? Don't they just chill the water, let the data center warm it and then reuse it?

Why not check to see what California agriculture's doing with it's majority share of the water first?

Re:"growing focus on data centers' water use"

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm ... because it requires a lot of energy to cool water and companies are trying to do it cheaply so they want to take groundwater which is already cold?

Re:"growing focus on data centers' water use"

[FranTaylor]

Don't they just chill the water

here is a person with a pretty poor grasp of themodynamics

Re:"growing focus on data centers' water use"

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't the agriculture water get fed to crops, then the majority sinks into the ground where it ends up back in the water supply anyway?

Re:"growing focus on data centers' water use"

[Coren22]

I believe that the chillers used in data centers spray water over a radiator allowing the water to evaporate, the evaporating water draws heat away causing a performance increase to the warm side of the AC unit.

Usually however, they use grey water for this purpose as the water doesn't need to be clean, any water (except black water) will work. This is why the concerns over the NSA Utah data center's water usage are laughable, it is using grey water, not clean water, so it is water that otherwise would be being treated and dumped into a river.

Re:"growing focus on data centers' water use"

[FranTaylor]

it is water that otherwise would be being treated and dumped into a river.

you just told us that they are evaporating the water, so it would end up in the atmosphere

Re:"growing focus on data centers' water use"

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not check to see the difference between it's and its?

Re:"growing focus on data centers' water use"

[msauve]

Do you know what "otherwise" means?

Re:"growing focus on data centers' water use"

[serbanp]

No. It gets lost through evaporation.

Re:"growing focus on data centers' water use"

[Coren22]

The water used in cooling datacenters is water that if not used for that purpose would be being treated and dumped back into rivers, not already treated water like comes from your tap.

Re: "growing focus on data centers' water use"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, an insult often used by people too dumb to understand the confusing world around them.

Re:"growing focus on data centers' water use"

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it make you feel good to put him down?
There are such things as closed loop chill water systems. Refrigerant cycled through a compressor, chiller, and condenser will transfer heat from the chill water to something else before the chill water is routed to cool components (local cooling fan coils). Condensing can be accomplished with a cooling tower type setup where water evaporates to cool like in a power plant, but heat could also rejected to the atmosphere like with your house A/C. Water has better heat capacity so you can reject more heat that way. Another option is just to pump water from a adjacent large body of water to cool A/C units and circulate it back to lose heat to ambient.

Re:"growing focus on data centers' water use"

[JimSadler]

Water chillers do use large amounts of water. The usual method of chilling is a baffled tower that sprays or drops large amounts of water into a partial vacuum to cause evaporation. You see these in industrial air conditioning systems frequently. The water from the tower is then piped to a freon chiller which chills water that is in a closed loop down to about 50 degrees F. and then that water is piped through the building into coils that use fans to blow air through the chilled coils which cool rooms within buildings. Some of these towers can use thousands of gallons a day of water. Direct cooling into a bay will raise the temperature of the bay. That is usually a banned practice. A better method in many places would to pump up deep ocean water which is quite cold compared to surface water. Differentials in disolved solids can actually cause a deep pipe inlet to be self pumping to the surface.

Re:"growing focus on data centers' water use"

[dbIII]

The limits depend on the size of the gear. Power stations can cope with cooling water that is very dirty but the insides of the cooling towers look like the hanging gardens of Babylon, and there is plenty of "wildlife" in the water droplets so face masks are essential. All that algae etc cuts down on heat transfer but killing it instead of manually cleaning it means very nasty poisons and unintended consequences - eg. if there is a bit of silicon dissolved in the water that can mean a huge population of diatoms, and a vast number of dead spiky hard diatoms sandblasting the soft brass tubes of condensers rips decades off the life of the tubes.

In the right place the chillers could use salt water, but since it means using more expensive materials it's not going to happens unless price or regulations force it.

Re:"growing focus on data centers' water use"

[gstoddart]

So, I'm no rocket surgeon ... but even I can imagine a closed system.

You know, it evaporates, but it's still inside some kind of vessel. Then it condenses, and you magically have water again. The water can then be evaporated again. Bonus points if you can exchange some of the heat with a separate loop of water without mixing them. Or maybe some kind of thing to increase the surface area and cool it. I'm calling it a radiator.

It's a new idea I just made up. Brand new and everything.

you just told us that they are evaporating the water, so it would end up in the atmosphere

Go the remedial section, look at several examples of closed systems and recirculation.

A hockey arena, your kitchen, your car AC (or it's engine cooling system), a nuclear submarine .. these are all applications which exist right now which allow the equivalent to happen. All without dumping it straight into the atmosphere.

Seriously ... WTF? Do you think magic happens inside of an air conditioner or a fridge?

I can't speak to how well it works or what the limitations are ... but I can say that what you describe is, in fact, a solved problem.

Unless of course you're imagining the streampunk data center, in which case venting the steam is just part of the awesome. But somehow, I don't think you meant that.

Re: "growing focus on data centers' water use"

[Anonymous Coward]

moo says the grandparent.

Modulating local water temps?

[ah.clem]

Is anyone considering the local effects of warming the water in the harbors these centers will be docked in? It seems to me, given the current toxic algal bloom off the west coast of the US at the moment, we might be just a bit concerned, right?

Re:Modulating local water temps?

[1sockchuck]

In a recent test, Nautilus says the water being returned to the bay was was just 4 degrees warmer than the intake temperature. Their design goal is to minimize the temperature differential to avoid any environmental impact. Having said that, the proof-of-concept test was with 5 racks of gear, rather than an 8 megawatt data center. They believe the design works, but it hasn't yet been tested at scale.

Re:Modulating local water temps?

[FranTaylor]

Is anyone considering the local effects of warming the water in the harbors these centers will be docked in?

does anyone consider the local effects of warming the air around these centers when they are on land?

Re:Modulating local water temps?

[starless]

4 degrees (C??) seems fairly large.
Even if their "goal is to minimize the temperature differential" presumably the energy they
are dumping into the bay will be the same.
e.g. faster flow will probably result in lower temperature differentials but applied to a larger quantity of water

Re:Modulating local water temps?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to cynically suggest that some clown will undoubtedly pop up and whine about returning warm water to the source. And here it is not even two posts down.

My, how naive I was.

Re:Modulating local water temps?

[hawguy]

In a recent test, Nautilus says the water being returned to the bay was was just 4 degrees warmer than the intake temperature. Their design goal is to minimize the temperature differential to avoid any environmental impact. Having said that, the proof-of-concept test was with 5 racks of gear, rather than an 8 megawatt data center. They believe the design works, but it hasn't yet been tested at scale.

Without knowing the volume of water, "4 degrees" is meaningless. That's like saying "We run our servers at 60 volts instead of 120 volts, so they use half of the electricity.

Re:Modulating local water temps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hot air will move up and away, how water will disperse slower. Also land/air animals are generally much less sensitive to changes in temperature than aquatic animals.

Re:Modulating local water temps?

[TWX]

Water has a much higher heat capacity than air does. Water is also a much more effective growth-medium than air is. The environmental effects of heat on air do exist, but they aren't as substantial as they are for water.

Re:Modulating local water temps?

[TWX]

So, what's clownish about identifying something that's been shown to be a problem in the past?

Re:Modulating local water temps?

[FranTaylor]

Hot air will move up and away, how water will disperse slower. Also land/air animals are generally much less sensitive to changes in temperature than aquatic animals.

in other words, it screws up the weather, but you don't know how much

Re:Modulating local water temps?

[bobbied]

Is anyone considering the local effects of warming the water in the harbors these centers will be docked in? It seems to me, given the current toxic algal bloom off the west coast of the US at the moment, we might be just a bit concerned, right?

Artificial way to produce an "El Niño"... Environmentalists will be coming unglued... (Grin)

Re:Modulating local water temps?

[dbIII]

Is anyone considering the local effects of warming the water in the harbors these centers will be docked in?

If they are forced to use multiple outputs as power stations are forced to do then that problem goes away. Local warming is a cheapskate shortcut problem and not an inherent problem with the technology

Salt water?

[selectspec]

Great for rusting

Re:Salt water?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. I used to work for a cruise line in IT. Each cruise ship is basically a floating data center because of all the things the computers are involved with. The infrastructure folks would say that it was the most hellish environment imaginable for servers and often kept multiple extras for any hardware on ship for when something failed.

Re:Salt water?

[FranTaylor]

The infrastructure folks would say that it was the most hellish environment imaginable for servers

You lock your servers up in airtight steel containers, you have an infinite heat sink available for free, and you don't have to worry about finding an admin at whatever hour, because they are right there on the ship. Sounds a lot better than most installations.

Re:Salt water?

[techno-vampire]

The problem of salt-water corrosion is an old, well-understood one and to a large extent, it's mostly a matter of applying the standard solutions to it. As an example, there are bronze alloys specifically designed to resist salt water that are used for plumbing that needs to carry sea water. To a large extent, you can minimize the problems by using that for the external half of a heat exchange unit, and something far less corrosive for the internal half.

Re:Salt water?

[Anonymous Coward]

The infrastructure folks would say that it was the most hellish environment imaginable for servers

They can't imagine prison telecom.

Totally different meaning of Software Piracy

[gurps_npc]

I can see it now, actual pirates stealing full boatloads of servers.

Re:Totally different meaning of Software Piracy

[Snake98]

Ya, Well call it The Pirate Bay

Re:Totally different meaning of Software Piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got some startup capital and I know a guy with a boat. Who wants in for a share of the profit?

Duties may include and are not limited to: swabbing, hoisting, pillaging.

Essential knowledge: computer maintenance, navigation, know what a yardarm is

Re:Totally different meaning of Software Piracy

[Coren22]

Wouldn't knowing what a cleat is be more important than a yardarm?

Re:Totally different meaning of Software Piracy

[TWX]

in Amazon Women on the Moon, video pirates attack the cargo ship MCA/Universal, full of movies... I was amused as we were watching the film on Laserdisc and when they encountered Laserdiscs one of the pirates rebutted, "bah! they're not compatible with my system!"

Re:Totally different meaning of Software Piracy

[bobbied]

No. no.. That's where the servers end up...

Re:Totally different meaning of Software Piracy

[h33t l4x0r]

Or call it WikiLeaks and then hope for a bailout.

Re:Totally different meaning of Software Piracy

[quantaman]

I can see it now, actual pirates stealing full boatloads of servers.

Alternately:

SysAdmin: The data centre is down.

Manager: It crashed?

SysAdmin: Yup.

Manager: How long till it's back up?

SysAdmin: Not sure, a few months maybe.

Manager: A FEW MONTHS?!?! What the hell happened?? Can't you just reboot things?!?

SysAdmin: Not really, a yacht crashed into it and it's sitting at the bottom of the harbour, it's going to take a few months to patch the hole and raise it back up to the surface.

Re:Totally different meaning of Software Piracy

[TeknoHog]

Not only that, but servers that implemented every calculation in floats.

Re:Totally different meaning of Software Piracy

[funwithBSD]

Manager: How the hell did that happen?!

SysAdmin: Hey, you are the one that though those surplus Phalanx systems were a waste of money....

Reminds me of the puppeteer planets

[Anonymous Coward]

In Niven's Known Space stories where their oceans boil from the heat.

Skeptical

[hawguy]

I'm skeptical that even at SF's inflated real estate prices that floating servers on a boat is cheaper than a ground-based datacenter. Marine structures are expensive to build and maintain and they have to pass regular USCG inspections. For cooling they could rent a warehouse near the bay and pump the water in.

Re:Skeptical

[FranTaylor]

having your servers on a ship can come in handy if your country suddenly decides to change its data retention laws

Re:Skeptical

[bobbied]

True, you just reflag the vessel to a country that has data retention laws you like and move into international waters.

Re:Skeptical

[mcrbids]

Running the fiber optic cables could get rather expensive though...

Re:Skeptical

[Applehu Akbar]

"Running the fiber optic cables could get rather expensive though.."

Look at the proliferation of places where underwater cables are landed now. There would be no need to patch over to an interconnect point.

Why not just pump in sea water?

[HockeyPuck]

Is it really cheaper to build a barge than it is to circulate sea water to a land based facility?

Re:Why not just pump in sea water?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Putting this thing on a barge is expensive navel gazing. You wind up with the maintenance of a boat, wired connections that must be protected and yet are exposed. Someone's vision of "we'll use the resources of the ocean" got away from them.

The only way a floating data centre makes any sense is if you actually need the mobility of being in a ship. If you do this for hire (e.g. temporary demand to support special events), or on an emergency services basis, or if you have unusual security requirements. Otherwise this is just dumb.

Put the DC onshore. Run pipes, they can be as long as you need. Now your DC doesn't pitch and roll. Your service entrance for all cabling can be secured properly. You don't worry much about storms. Your DC won't spring a leak and be in danger of sinking. Ice in the harbour is a non-issue. There is no vibration from diesel engines/gen sets. You don't have to pay wharf fees. Moving equipment in and out is easy because you can simply run a forklift wherever you need, with full delivery truck access, loading bays and all the rest.

Or are they really trying to create a cool ocean lair for Dr. Evil?

Re:Why not just pump in sea water?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Putting this thing on a barge is expensive navel gazing

You spelled naval wrong.

Re:Why not just pump in sea water?

[Applehu Akbar]

"Put the DC onshore. Run pipes, they can be as long as you need"

Good idea, especially if you want to make use of the waste heat when it emerges as hot water. But the Greens are going to object that in the event of a tsunami, the local groundwater is going to get contaminated with ones and zeroes. Windows malware could persist in the environment for generations to come.

Re:Why not just pump in sea water?

[PPalmgren]

Not even just the building location, but the rent. Harbor space is EXPENSIVE! Limited docking space options, maximum need. We're talking billions to have space to dock large vessels, as an example. The cost per acre is probably an order of magnitude higher, or more, than an inland data center.

A few issues with this:

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a few issues with this idea:

1: Is the data center going to be on a ship? If so, will it be in US waters? If not it is free game for any naval force whatsoever who feels like boarding the data center. There are a lot of issues about maritime property rights that make property disputes on land look tame in comparison, especially in international waters.

2: Reliable power? Ships are not static objects.

3: Stability. The closest thing to a stable platform is the prison barge attached to Riker's Island, and that thing requires a naval staff, bilge pumps, ballast tanks, and many other items. If they don't do their job, the barge can sink. A data center barge only will be worse.

4: Marine environments are by far the worst environments to even think of putting a data center in. There is a reason why anything related to boating costs 10-20 times as much as normal landlubber stuff. For example, just attaching a lug to a battery wire requires a $4000 hydraulic crimp tool as well as proper shrink wrap insulation. Same job for a car? $10 pair of pliers can do it.

Re:A few issues with this:

[bobbied]

There are a few issues with this idea:

1: Is the data center going to be on a ship? If so, will it be in US waters? If not it is free game for any naval force whatsoever who feels like boarding the data center. There are a lot of issues about maritime property rights that make property disputes on land look tame in comparison, especially in international waters.

2: Reliable power? Ships are not static objects.

3: Stability. The closest thing to a stable platform is the prison barge attached to Riker's Island, and that thing requires a naval staff, bilge pumps, ballast tanks, and many other items. If they don't do their job, the barge can sink. A data center barge only will be worse.

4: Marine environments are by far the worst environments to even think of putting a data center in. There is a reason why anything related to boating costs 10-20 times as much as normal landlubber stuff. For example, just attaching a lug to a battery wire requires a $4000 hydraulic crimp tool as well as proper shrink wrap insulation. Same job for a car? $10 pair of pliers can do it.

5. Data connections will be difficult, high speed ones even worse.

6. Provisioning and resupply of fuel, maintenance spares, personnel and food will be very expensive.

7. Emergencies will be hard to deal with, fires, accidents, taking on water etc..

8. Storms, wind, waves, etc will all cause you issues.

But, as you point out, on board power will be the largest cost issue they face and will make this very difficult to accomplish, even if they can get it from natural sources and not have to generate it from fossil fuels.

Re:A few issues with this:

[LWATCDR]

These are barges in a bay not ships as sea. So those are non-issues.

Re:A few issues with this:

[Anonymous Coward]

A barge is a ship. Is it moored down like a bridge? No. Is it floating in the air? No. It displaces water, so it is a ship (and no, it has more than one deck, so it isn't a boat).

Again, the prison barge moored at Riker's has to have a staff of mariners, or else it will sink. A barge is a ship.

Same thing with a floating data center. A few rough waves, and it will topple just like any other floating sea-borne craft.

Re:A few issues with this:

[LWATCDR]

these would be non-is
"5. Data connections will be difficult, high speed ones even worse.

6. Provisioning and resupply of fuel, maintenance spares, personnel and food will be very expensive.

7. Emergencies will be hard to deal with, fires, accidents, taking on water etc..

8. Storms, wind, waves, etc will all cause you issues.sues"
Okay 7 is still an issue but storms in a SF Bay, data connections, and provisioning would not be a big deal.

Cheaper until they run into env regulations

[Bugler412]

It will be cheaper until the run smack into the environment regulations that limit how much you are allowed to heat a natural body of water. A data center won't be as bad as a power station using direct cycle cooling, but put enough of these "barge data centers" together in a single location, I presume they will congregate in areas of cheap power and high local bandwidth availability right? And you will hit the limits. Then you have to use much less efficient air to liquid or similar cooling towers anyway, along with the inherently higher costs of floating structures on high value waterfront property.

Too bad they aren't making distilled water, too.

[denis-The-menace]

They could use the "Free" heat to boil the water to make distilled water and sell the distilled water!

" ... before going bankrupt ... "

[Anonymous Coward]

That pretty much says it all....

100% efficiency if the Water Needs Heating

[Anonymous Coward]

It's even better if you can find some water that already has to be heated. The college I went to looked at using pool water as their heat destination. Their calculations showed it could be 163% efficient. I don't think the backup data center it was designed for was ever built, but it still seams like a decent idea. http://www.calvin.edu/~mkh2/thermal-fluid_systems_desig/2010-data-center-seminar.pdf

Re:100% efficiency if the Water Needs Heating

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing can really be more than 100% efficient in this context. If I have an old 100W server and a new 20W server, the new server would be 80% more efficient than the old one. If the new server was e.g. 110% more efficient than the old one, it would be generating energy at 10W while operating.

If we were talking about something like an old power plant with an output of 100W and a new one at 300W with the same inputs, the new one would be 200% more efficient than the old one.

Re:Too bad they aren't making distilled water, too

[swb]

I thought of this, too. Is there a way to recover some of the waste heat and turn it back into electricity?

no worries of sinking or capsizing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a bad day when your entire data center sinks to the bottom.

I would laugh ....

[DaMattster]

If someone cut the lines keeping the barge moored to the pier. It would be funny watching all of those servers float away. BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

Good luck with that in California

[John Jorsett]

I'll bet the discharge water won't meet environmental standards, even if it's the identical stuff taken from the ocean. There was one guy who had a business farming fish and he was using ocean water. His discharge was cleaner than the intake water, but it didn't matter; they wanted him to clean it even more. He ended up shutting down and moving the business to Hawaii rather than deal with the intransigence of the bureaucrats.

Corrosive.

[westlake]

Nothing says rust like a steel barge that floats in salt water and breathes salt air.

It is perhaps worth adding that here in the Northeast there is a powerful movement towards reclaiming the industrial waterfront for parks and green space.

For the curious, 95 examples of used barges for sale:

The add copy should be read like you were shopping for a second-hand boat in a "Monkey Island" game. Used Deck Barges

Guam is the best place for a data-centre.

[dsmatthews9379]

You need renewable power and cooling, plus stability and security, and connectivity to the rest of the world.

So what does Guam have going for it?

It is already a fibre hub. http://www.submarinecablemap.c...

It is less than 150 km north of the bottom of a very deep ocean trench. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It is politically stable because it is a US territory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Guam is the best place for a data-centre.

[currently_awake]

I would think Alaska or northern Canada would have significant advantages in the area of cooling. Running cooling pipes from the North Pacific or the Arctic Ocean would eliminate a lot of the cooling energy costs.

SALTWATER

[Anonymous Coward]

...as good for electronics as water but now with twice the corrosion.

Seriously have they considered the toxic hellhole environment they are making? Condensation + military surplus + mold + electronics + high voltage + seawater + waste heat?! Can you say sick building syndrome?

seems overly complex

[Anonymous Coward]

why not just build more datacenters in norther canada?

Re:Too bad they aren't making distilled water, too

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in Europe, we use this kind of excess heat in district heating. It can be used locally to heat the facility or if there's a lot of excess heat, it can be distributed to local residental areas through an intermediary company operating in the energy industry. This is quite lucrative and helps in getting back some of the operating costs.

Granted, here the temperatures drop quite low during the winter so it might not be a viable option in areas that are warm throughout the winter.

When I read "floating data center"

[Anonymous Coward]

I wanted to think, OK this is the mothership floating over New York from V.

Recycle

[NewYork]

Can't we recycle the heat generated by data center to electricity?