China has completed the construction of what is being hailed as the world’s first wind-powered underwater data center (UDC), situated off the coast of the Lin-gang Special Area in the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone. With an investment of approximately ¥1.6 billion (US$226 million), the project represents a significant advancement in sustainable, high-performance computing infrastructure.

Figure 1. World’s First Wind-Powered Underwater Data Center Revealed.

The ambitious project integrates offshore wind power—which supplies over 95% of the facility’s electricity—with the naturally cool seabed environment to minimize energy consumption and land use. Compared with conventional terrestrial data centers, this underwater facility is designed to lower overall power use by an estimated 22.8%, eliminate fresh water consumption, and reduce land requirements by more than 90%. Figure 1 shows World’s First Wind-Powered Underwater Data Center Revealed.

As is widely recognized, data centers require massive amounts of cooling to operate efficiently. Large centers can consume up to five million gallons of water per day—roughly equivalent to the daily water use of a town with 10,000 to 50,000 residents. For example, OpenAI and Oracle’s Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, plans to limit water use with a closed-loop system, recycling an initial one million gallons with annual top-ups of just 12,000 gallons, according to Oracle’s new co-CEO Clay Magouyrk at the CloudWorld conference in Las Vegas in September.

Cooling is one of the largest energy drains in modern tech hubs, typically accounting for 40–50% of total power consumption. By leveraging seawater for natural cooling, the Lin-gang Special Area UDC is expected to cut cooling-related energy use to below 10%. Phase one of the project has been completed, targeting a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rating no higher than 1.15, well within China’s national requirement of 1.25 for new or retrofitted large-scale data centers by the end of 2025.

Unlike traditional data storage facilities, this UDC is designed to support a wide array of advanced digital-economy and computing applications. It will handle artificial intelligence workloads and high-end model training, provide computing infrastructure for 5G networks, the industrial Internet of Things (IoT), and e-commerce, and serve as part of the region’s backbone for international data flows. Essentially, it functions as a green, high-performance underwater computing cluster.

Phase 1 of the project is a 2.3-MW demonstration facility, with plans to expand in Phase 2 to a 24-MW capacity, though a launch date for the expansion has not yet been announced. Earlier this year, China deployed another UDC off the coast of Lingshui Li in Hainan Province, marking the world’s first commercial underwater data center (in contrast to Microsoft’s test facility off Scotland). The Lin-gang Special Area project, located about 47 miles (75 km) southeast of central Shanghai, is the first to combine offshore wind power with subsea cooling at such a large commercial scale.

Despite the milestone, the technology remains in its early stages. Engineers acknowledge that moving from this demonstration facility to full-scale operations will require further development. Key considerations include maintenance costs, corrosion prevention, and potential environmental impacts on marine ecosystems.

“Construction of UDCs is still in its initial stage,” said Wang Shifeng, chairman of China Communications Construction Company’s Third Harbor Engineering. “To transition from demonstration projects to large-scale applications, further progress is needed in technological maturity and cost optimization.”

Source: NEW ATLAS

Cite this article:

Priyadharshini S (2025), World's First Underwater Data Center Powered by Wind Unveiled, AnaTechMaz, pp.171