October 29, 2025
In a significant step for green computing infrastructure, China has deployed what it is calling the world's first wind-powered underwater data center. The facility, situated 35 meters below the surface off the coast of Shanghai, represents a new model for energy-efficient, land-saving cloud infrastructure.
The $226 million project, located in the Lin-gang Special Area, is designed as a prototype. According to the Lin-gang development committee, the initial phase has been completed with a capacity of 2.3 megawatts. The project is planned to scale to a total capacity of 24 megawatts, which would make it substantially larger than Microsoft's experimental Project Natick.
The initiative is backed by a consortium of state-owned and major companies, including Shenergy, China Telecom’s Shanghai branch, INESA, and CCCC Third Harbor Engineering. The operator, Shanghai Hicloud, has reported that it is already exploring a cooperation agreement for a future 500-megawatt version at offshore sites.
The core engineering concept is straightforward: server racks are sealed in watertight capsules and submerged, allowing the surrounding ocean to act as a natural coolant. By eliminating the need for traditional chillers and using seawater directly as a heat sink, the operator claims the facility can achieve an exceptional power usage effectiveness (PUE) below 1.15. This figure is lower than the best averages for land-based hyperscale data centers and surpasses China's national minimum standard of 1.25.
Project targets for the Lin-gang zone include limiting cooling power to under 10% of total energy consumption and powering the entire system with offshore wind energy. The developers state that this design results in a near-zero footprint facility that requires no freshwater and operates independently of the land-based power grid, with 95% of its electricity sourced from wind.
The project follows principles similar to Microsoft's Project Natick, which ran from 2013 to 2024. While Microsoft found that submerged servers could be up to eight times more reliable, it ultimately concluded that the economic challenges and difficulties with servicing the hardware were significant barriers to commercialization.
HiCloud now faces the challenge of overcoming those same hurdles. The project team states that the servers are housed in sealed steel capsules coated with a corrosion-resistant material to withstand the harsh saltwater environment. Developers also claim that thermal discharge and marine impact are within acceptable limits for this demonstration phase, though independent verification of large-scale environmental effects is still pending.
A primary concern for the long-term viability of such facilities remains the high cost and complexity of servicing or upgrading hardware in these pressurized, submerged capsules. Scaling the technology to hundreds of megawatts would significantly amplify these operational risks.
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