{"id":32946,"date":"2026-03-30T02:35:44","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T01:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/?p=32946"},"modified":"2026-03-30T02:35:46","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T01:35:46","slug":"rechenzentren-unter-wasser-china-verlagert-die-digitale-infrastruktur-ins-meer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kaizen-blog.org\/en\/rechenzentren-unter-wasser-china-verlagert-die-digitale-infrastruktur-ins-meer\/","title":{"rendered":"Data centers underwater - China moves digital infrastructure into the sea"},"content":{"rendered":"

China is building data centers where cooling is no longer a problem: in the sea. Off the coast of Shanghai, a facility is currently being developed that not only uses new technology, but addresses a fundamental problem of the digital world. Server farms consume enormous amounts of electricity and water. A large portion of this is used for cooling alone. The machines run around the clock, densely packed, generate heat and must be continuously cooled, otherwise failures and data loss threaten. In conventional facilities, hundreds of thousands of liters of water are pumped through systems every day, cooled, evaporated. At the same time, these locations are often in regions where water is already scarce - Arizona, parts of Spain, the Middle East. The conflict is obvious: computing power grows, water becomes scarcer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

China reverses the approach. Instead of consuming water, it uses it directly. The project off Shanghai is being built about ten kilometers off the coast and is supplied with energy from an offshore wind farm. According to Li Langping of Hailanyun, the facility is expected to run on 97 percent wind power. The servers are housed in pressure resistant modules underwater. Seawater is guided through cooling systems, absorbs the heat and carries it away. This saves energy. Internal calculations together with the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology estimate at least 30 percent lower power consumption compared to land based facilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Off the coast of Shanghai, the project has long moved beyond the planning phase. About ten kilometers offshore in the Lingang zone, initial modules have already been installed and partially put into operation. This is no longer about testing, but about ongoing expansion. Current capacity is in the low megawatt range, with plans to scale to a multiple of that. The facility is directly connected to offshore wind power and is intended to be almost entirely supplied by it. Cooling is carried out continuously using seawater, without the massive use of freshwater required on land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scale is deliberately staged. In the first phase, nearly two hundred racks are installed underwater, designed for several hundred AI servers. This is small compared to conventional large scale facilities, but exactly as planned. China is not pursuing a single large project, but is building step by step and expanding in parallel. After the pilot project off Hainan, Shanghai is the point where an experiment becomes a system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n