Subsea data centers prove feasible following pressure tests

U.S. company Subsea Cloud has completed pressure testing which is said to prove feasibility for data centers to be placed subsea.

Subsea Cloud said its centers will be installed in a modular fashion providing green, affordable data center infrastructure.

The first ten pods to be deployed are expected to offset more than 7,683 tons of CO2 compared to an equivalent land-based center.

The pods themselves are shipped to their destination and plugged into the grid subsea. They are said to eliminate the need for electrically-driven cooling and all water usage.

“After completing initial pressure testing of our underwater data center pods, we are happy to confirm structural integrity and optimal performance targets were reached at depths of 3,000 meters (9,481 ft),” said Subsea Cloud co-founder and CEO, Maxie Reynolds.

“This is an important milestone towards our ambitious target to deploy hundreds of subsea data centers, starting in 2022 and a major step towards decarbonizing them completely by 2026.”

Subsea Cloud’s focus is on the U.S. market and its financial, healthcare, and military industries, as well as converting some hyperscale players in the space from onshore centers to subsea centers.

The company is also undergoing a sustainability assessment with Gold Standard, a voluntary carbon offset program focused on progressing the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

This is anticipated to help enable serial production of the data centers and deployment in areas where sustainability issues may have prevented this.

“Our design and approach reduce latency, carbon emissions and afford our clients flexibility, scalability and sustainability. We can deploy rapidly and closer to where the data is needed than ever before. Moreover, growing pains for our clients are avoided,” Reynolds concluded.

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