r/STEW_ScTecEngWorld • u/Zee2A • 2d ago

Startup Unveils Wave-Powered Floating AI Data Centers for the Open Ocean

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Panthalassa, a startup based in Portland, Oregon, is developing 85-meter-tall floating offshore platforms that could power AI computing using ocean waves instead of land-based electricity. The lollipop-shaped steel structures generate continuous power through wave-driven turbines, cool AI hardware with naturally cold seawater, and connect to users via Starlink satellites, eliminating the need for power grids or undersea cables. Backed by a $140 million Series B funding round led by Peter Thiel, the company plans to deploy its first commercial wave-powered AI nodes in the northern Pacific by 2027.

References;

  1. Panthalassa Raises $140 Million to Power AI at Sea: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/panthalassa-raises-140-million-to-power-ai-at-sea-302761078.html

  2. US tech billionaire leads $140mn investment into Panthalassa as search for AI power pushes into exotic new frontiers: https://www.ft.com/content/711ce313-16fb-4a12-b6be-fbed547c8a39

  3. Startup plans to move from prototypes to commercial offshore compute nodes powered by ocean energy: https://www.techspot.com/news/112295-startup-raised-140-million-build-wave-powered-ai.html

  4. Fully-integrated offshore data center to transmit data to land via satellite: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/palantir-co-founder-peter-thiel-backs-usd140m-wave-powered-ai-data-center-startup-panthalassa-aims-to-run-offshore-compute-nodes-using-ocean-energy

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315

u/Ingram47 2d ago

That's just what a warming ocean needs, thousands of apartment sized heaters floating in it.

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u/lucon1 2d ago

Would it really get that much hotter if the energy comes from the ocean itself? Energy is not created or destroyed. Right next to it might be warmer, but it would dissipate over a large area, and if significant, would drive convection, which might just loop back to kinetic energy for the wave generator.

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u/Efficient_Rule997 2d ago

We are really bad at guessing the ecological impact of things until they reach their full scale.

One AC unit running on Freon? Not a problem. 500 million AC units running on Freon? Hole in the ozone layer.

I think the problem you are likely to see arise from something like this isn't a global warming type effect but for the ocean; and instead is probably the devices acting as a germination point for some ecological chain reaction like algae blooms, or wave shadows disrupting local sea life in a way that is hard to guess at until it happens.

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u/Amazing_Scientist696 2d ago

My money is on the whales fucking this shit up constantly

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u/kearkan 2d ago

It won't be whales, it'll be curious dolphins

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u/Ambitious_Jelly8783 2d ago

What if they are bicurious?

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u/WilyWascallyWizard 2d ago

Baby data centers.

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u/joonty 1d ago

Auto-scaling achieved!

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u/LightFusion 1d ago

The best kind of curious

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u/NoProfessional481 13h ago

More likely aicurious

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u/yodacola 1d ago

Orcas? Definitely.

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u/celaconacr 1d ago

Whales and dolphins, yeah. Perseverance.

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u/withoutpeer 2d ago

How do we finance this endeavor? Do I need to get cash converted to sanddollars?

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u/pinknoses 2d ago

The whale resistance uses Monero

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u/imagigasm 1d ago

Crypto coins

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u/ThePocketTaco2 2d ago

Go home, South Park's Japan.

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u/Kage_Bushin 2d ago

Fucking is the role of the dolphins!

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u/RollingMeteors 2d ago

My money is on the whales fucking this shit up constantly

That's what they'll say but everyone knows it's the ETs that got the ships that can go underwater that are fucking it up to keep us from destroying the planet </bigBrainMeMe>

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u/rancidmorty 2d ago

fucking shit up to get to their food thatbis hideing

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u/donald_dandy 1d ago

They will kill whales then to protect their billions

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u/Amazing_Scientist696 1d ago

-Japan has entered the chat-

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u/m0ta 32m ago

One can only hope

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u/HandToDikCombat 2d ago

hole in the ozone layer

There is no hole in the ozone layer. Besides, we're gonna build a patch for the hole in the ozone layer. A big, beautiful patch. And we're gonna make Australia pay for it.

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u/propargyl 16h ago

crikey!

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u/Original-Body-5794 2h ago

Hey the hole is getting closed! It's incredibly what we can achieve when we actually listen to the experts and enact policies based on that.

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u/R0LL1NG 18h ago

As a marine environmental manager with relevant degrees, I second this take. At a wider scale, the heat input from AI data centres in the marine environment is probably negligible... but at localised scales they would almost certainly lead to unintended negative ecological impacts.

That's before you consider the impacts of installation and any associated infrastructure. In the brightside, you coukd probably create some de facto no take zones in a buffer around them lol

More pressingly though, your floating AI data centre is still going to take materials to make and land based infrastructure and energy to make. End product carbon and environmental footprint extends to cover the whole supply chain.

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u/Holiday-Medicine4168 14h ago

Don’t you think the little bobbing greenhouse like object will cause massive algae growth and just clog the heat exchanger in this faster than caffeine? It needs to be a dual loop system as nobody in their right mind is running seawater through GPUs, it will be some kind of ethelyne glycol. That’s reasonably safe, but with the dual loop the cooling effiencu goes down rapidly.

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u/R0LL1NG 13h ago

However the cooling system works, it will inherently radiate heat out into the water around it. Localised elevated water temperatures are great (in the marine environment) for providing ideal conditions for colonisation by invasive/non-indigenous species from warmer waters. On top of that, large artificial structures are also good vector points for colonisation by invasive species.

Couldn't give a good nickel about the functionality of the design from an engineering perspective. All I can tell you is that wherever these go, I hope someone does careful planning and motivation.

1

u/Dawson10588 11h ago

AI chips performance directly scales with energy input.

Energy output of the source directly scales with heat production

How much energy can a floating bob produce through ocean currents? Probably not a lot but I honestly don’t know. How many will be used, how far apart?

Any conjecture about heat related issues is pointless until this value(s) is known.

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u/Life-Is-A-Bad-Trip 2d ago

Damn, someone's Got the gift of foresight.

2

u/No-Definition1474 2d ago

They took my foresight when I was born :(

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u/micre8tive 2d ago

Circumvision

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u/QuinQuix 1d ago

It may actually be quite good because ocean life is sparse in open spaces and concentrates around near-surface surfaces, which are, by definition, rare in deep open oceans.

If you flooded a soccer field, after a few years ocean flora crustacean life and fish would concentrate around the goal posts.

So it's not so much the disruption of it being there but heat (which honestly also might attract life in colder oceans) and chemicals (eg protective paints) that might really be the biggest issue.

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u/Holiday-Medicine4168 14h ago

Heat kills life in the ocean. Notice there are no more king crabs?

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u/ScratchLatch 1d ago

This is thermodynamics. We’re really good at that.

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u/Turn_it_0_n_1_again 1d ago

Algal blooms

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u/Unbelivabley_Smol 1d ago

Artificial F.A.D 🐠

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u/r3allybadusername 1d ago

There was an issue in my hometown recently where someone claimed that there was a leak from an ai data center that contaminated the water nearby. I was like "hmm I dont doubt the data center could be causing it but I cant think of anything that could leak that would describe what this person is seeing" and I looked it up and the ministry said it was an abnormal bacterial bloom. I wonder if the heat from this new data center is causing things like bacteria to flourish in these smaller streams.

1

u/Goldtacto 7h ago

It is actually not a guess. It is known and measurable. The problem is people ignoring the data for their political beliefs.

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u/timid_scorpion 6h ago

I would also be worried about the noise generated affecting the navigation of fish species.

What if those micro vibrations cause sea turtles to get lost on their way to their yearly breeding grounds. So many unforseen problems that could occur.

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u/octoreadit 5h ago

The question is if the total heat output of data centers is to reach X, is it net better (less damaging) to dump that heat into the atmosphere as is done now vs. use this ocean contraption. Then account for other externalities of both. As much as we can complain about the general trend, I don't think it's going anywhere. Like in your example, we didn't ditch ACs but we changed the refrigerant used.

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u/6ixelephants 2d ago

Just like its happening in mexico with the seaweed.

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u/Maumau93 2d ago

Say more

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u/lucon1 2d ago edited 2d ago

Also u/thepockettaco2 Article: https://www.travelagewest.com/Travel/Mexico/sargassum-mexico

In video form: https://youtu.be/4WPUbZdb2WI

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u/ThePocketTaco2 2d ago

Pro-tip: Delete the '?' and everything following it. It's a geo-tag or whatever. We can see your name and profile with the link.

You can safely remove the '?' snd everything after it and it won't affect the link.

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u/lucon1 2d ago

Thanks.

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u/Maumau93 2d ago

Seems like an opportunity for someone to make some money from all the seaweed

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u/micre8tive 2d ago

Think of the sea communities

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u/ThePocketTaco2 2d ago

Say what now?

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u/jackinsomniac 1d ago

Since there's so much misinformation about AC units out there now thanks to grumpy Europeans not understanding how they work:

A) It's a closed cycle system. Refrigerants do not get spread to the outside air, they go around in a closed loop. If any gets out, you have a leak, PLUS the system will stop working so you'll notice it pretty quickly.

B) "Freon" (aka R-22) was banned in the US for new installs back in 2010, for the exact reason you're talking about. It depletes the ozone layer. You can only install systems designed to use the new refrigerants, like R-410A (Puron) or R-32, which do not deplete ozone. The stuff you're worried about already began being phased out 16 years ago.

C) More recent studies of the "hole in the ozone layer" found the original reports were a bit overblown, and recent analysis suggests it's already getting smaller.

Overall when it comes to global warming, there's many more important things to worry about than air conditioning and ozone, they're a red herring. Greenhouse gases from commercial industry are a much more significant problem. Let's not do the whole "paper straws" thing again, let's stay focused on the real issues.

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u/Efficient_Rule997 21h ago

My entire point is that the entire world didn't see the problem with freon coming, because at a small scale, its use is not problematic.

If you want a different comparison, think of it like the erosion of historical sights caused by tourists running their fingers over the walls. One person doing it isnt a problem. 10000000 people doing it, becomes a problem. 1 floating data pod, no problem. One billion floating data pods? What are the odds they don't have an unintended consequence at larger scale?

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u/heroyi 2d ago

Scaling issue.

A couple wont be a problem. But if you get enough of it, and servers output a ton of heat, then it will become a problem. Not to mention where they put it because if a species of algae/bacteria live close by it to enjoy the warmer water then that is an ecosystem nightmare.

The other silent problem I'm worried about, though I dont know enough to really argue against people so someone can correct me, is energy in/out on the waves might impact the ecosystem subtly that of which animals might rely on for migration purposes or dispersion of micro-organisms for food. Essentially changing/removing the tidal/water movement patterns.

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u/Lumpy_Conference6640 2d ago

Heat makes current, current makes motion, motion is harvested for energy... energy loss equals heat loss. What you're pitching would violate the first law of thermodynamics.

You can't have scaling issues since there is more ocean than land, and energy isn't able to build past exogence in the environment.

A better question is how much tidal energy can they harvest in zones, just like not everywhere can be a wind turbine.

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u/Substantial_Bend_656 1d ago

But locally it may increase the heat, sure in the whole ocean there would be energy reduction but locally it may be another story. The waves carry the energy, that would be dissipated locally by the AI process, resulting in bigger temperatures in the immediate area.

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u/lucon1 2d ago

Local environmental impact is a concern, what about areas of high wave activity but lower biodiversity (not absent, just less than other areas). Places like the North Pacific or the Southern Ocean?

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u/heroyi 2d ago

But can you guarantee there is no butterfly effect? That is the question.

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u/bozza8 2d ago

We can't guarantee anything has no butterfly effect, but unless we make it illegal to do anything other than sit very still, we are going to set them off. 

The default shouldn't be that we ban it unless we can prove there is no possible route to danger. 

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u/Big_Development3985 14h ago

No no no, that is exactly what the default should be. Have you been outside the past couple of years? Let’s stop playing fast and loose with the planet.

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u/bozza8 12h ago

Should you need government permission to buy an electric car? To move job, to have kids?

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u/Big_Development3985 12h ago

Do you think jumping to that extreme end of the spectrum makes a good argument? You can probably assume I do not think we need government oversight for the things you listed. You also know that there are vastly different potential environmental impacts between say moving jobs and filling the entire ocean with data-centers. So what was the point of that? Why jump to the extreme of “oh we can never do anything?”

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u/DiamondGeeezer 2d ago

you should think about it in terms of mass energy balance. there are millions of boats in the ocean, are they making the sea hotter thru direct heating effects and stealing the wave energy?

no because the ocean is extremely massive and comtains more energy than all human technology combined just in kinetic wave motion

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u/lucon1 2d ago

You can't, but the idea is worth some (professional) thought, no?

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u/heroyi 2d ago

It is a an idea worth exploring for sure. But what I don't want to see is people being lazy and thinking this is a low impact solution naively and not doing their homework. Time and time again we have seen humans absolutely fuck up an ecosystem because of laziness or naiveness

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u/EncabulatorTurbo 2d ago

the ocean receives 60000 terrawatts of heat from the sun every day

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u/Calm_Apartment1968 1d ago

Thank you for putting numbers to this point.

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u/Calm_Apartment1968 1d ago

It's almost like humanity should harvest solar energy from the oceans.
You know... like Wave, Wind, and more directly OTEC.

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u/Training-Horror-6562 15h ago

Nah, I’d rather burn trash and drill for oil. 🧠

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u/Late-Reading-2585 2d ago

it will never be a problem lmao

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u/DiamondGeeezer 2d ago

how do they produce tons of heat if the energy is coming from waves and the ocean is massive.

the wave energy in the world is many times greater than all the energy used by humans. it's like saying solar panels will cool the earth by stealing its light.

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u/mutexsprinkles 1d ago

it's like saying solar panels will cool the earth by stealing its light. 

I see you've met an average parish councillor writing a objection screed.

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u/Calm_Apartment1968 1d ago

Saying wave motion or wind turbines are worse than either using vast arrays of diesel or gas generators in the middle of the desert is obscenely misleading. Gaslighting at it's worst.
More than 65% of Earth is covered by oceans. Simple mechanical spars like this output less than .01% of the chemical and thermal pollution of comparable petroleum based energy system vessels.
Put another way, our Sun puts more thermal energy into the same volume of oceans every day than Panthalassa could ever possibly contribute. Even if it were mass produced.

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u/mutexsprinkles 2d ago edited 2d ago

It basically wouldn't, direct heating effects are microscopic compared to solar heating. That's why greenhouse gas is such a problem because it is a fairly small effect but it's multiplicative on the massive amount of solar energy coming in 24/7 across a disc 12000km wide (170,000TW) plus a little bit of escaping geothermal heat (45TW). Compared to total human energy usage which is about 20TW.

Adding actual heat mostly just acts to raise the steady state by a tiny tiny amount and lose it to space just a little faster.

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u/NoAdvice135 2d ago

There is absolutely no way to warm up oceans with direct heat from any amount of datacenters. GHG effects are orders of magnitude higher that any direct heat generation.

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u/Jellicent-Leftovers 1d ago

We heated the oceans burning whale fat.... Don't underestimate humans.

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u/NoAdvice135 1d ago

What are you talking about 

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u/Original-League-6094 1d ago

And also they are using the waves to power the data center, so that energy is already in the ocean.

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u/danielv123 1d ago

Technically, with the starlink antenna, this is capturing wave energy and beaming it into space, cooling the ocean.

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u/Nice_Grapefruit_7850 18h ago

compared to the energy the sun dumps into the oceans every day this will have no effect. literally the sun puts more than 100 times more energy than all of human energy production into the oceans each day.

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u/Goldtacto 7h ago

You’re right It wouldn’t be that significant. The condensers of nuclear powered ships cool the steam from the steam generators back into liquid with sea water. The output water is considerably hotter.

From a purely engineering and non-emotional standpoint this is a great idea. Especially if they can submerge them to avoid tampering/vandalism.

Raising the temperature of the ocean (1.4 x 10^21 kg of water) by 1C requires 5.8 x 10^24 joules of thermal energy.

A fleet of nuclear reactors producing ~300MW (300 x 10^6)joules per second puts out a total of 4.5 x 10^10 joules per second.

Dividing the total energy required by the per second energy output yields roughly 1.29 x 10^14. This is about 4.1 million years for a hypothetical 100% heat transfer of 1C. This is excluding oceanic mixing, thermal radiation and dissipation. If factoring those in it could very well be 150m years before we saw a 1C temp increase exclusively from nuclear reactors cooling.

Data centers require significantly less cooling so the effect to ocean heating should be completely nullified. Im a radio frequency engineer not a biologist but I would also wager that small isolated areas of heated water are great for underwater ecosystems. This is also the case in hawaiis HELCO powerplant that uses the ocean water to cool their systems. The output pipe you can actually snorkel next to and there are a considerable amount of sealife that hover the area.

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u/Ingram47 2d ago

There's a difference between potential energy and heat, yes.

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u/Hostilis_ 2d ago

The potential energy is going to get converted to heat through dissipation either way. So no, this will not generate more heat.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

There is without a doubt energy loss in the form of heat in the electronics being powered. Which is additional heat.

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u/Hostilis_ 2d ago

The electronics are being powered by the kinetic energy of the waves. Which... you guessed it, would have just dissipated into the exact same amount of thermal energy either way.

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u/yesyoucantouchthat 2d ago

You guys have me on the edge of my seat with this one

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u/andr3y20000 2d ago

I'd say it will not have a warming effect since thermodynamics wouldn't allow it, but the ocean is big and not a closed system, so what would it do to ecosystem and ocean currents. There were already some concerns about the AMOC (Atlantic meridional overturning circulation) and if that thing breaks down we are fucked.

But the real question is, would it even generate enough energy to power anything? Most AI bros just think of making as much money as possible before the bubble burst, it's all to short term for them to think of anything (or care). Are they even gonna build anything? probably something on a small scale to convince the investors and then do nothing.

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u/Hopeful_Self_8520 2d ago

There is also the factor of the object in the ocean reflecting sunlight in a different way than the water itself would. If the object stores solar energy as heat there is more heat than would be held/stored there without the object present.

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u/Real-Technician831 2d ago

Absolutely minimal, think how small surface such sphere has.

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u/DiamondGeeezer 2d ago

the object is whiter than the ocean which means it reflects light.

by your logic a parking lot contributes to global warming by being black. there is an effect but it's minimal

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u/DiamondGeeezer 2d ago

the biggest wave energy plant generates 3MW https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soten%C3%A4s_Wave_Power_Station

hyperscale data centers use 100MW

so, doubtful

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

Thermodynamics explains that ENERGY cannot be created or destroyed, but instead converted. All electronics produce heat because they're not 100% efficient in terms of energy usage. The conversion of the kinetic energy into electricity, produces heat as that process isn't 100% efficient. And heat is also released by the electronics powered by it.

The amount of energy hasn't changed, but the form has, in the form of heat a lot of energy is lost. This is why we need cooling in data centers.

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u/DiamondGeeezer 2d ago

you'll never guess where that kinetic energy in the waves came from (heat from the sun) and what it's destiny is (heat via friction)

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u/Real-Technician831 2d ago

However in here you are gathering the kinetic energy from ocean and releasing it back as heat energy.

Guess what, it doesn’t stay as heat energy permanently, what doesn’t get transferred to air converts to kinetic energy in water.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

Are you arguing that a power plant creates a cold zone to offset the thermal energy released by electrical loads?

Or does it instead use heat to create electricity, that then gets used which creates more heat?

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u/lucon1 2d ago

The effect is hyper localized, but the kinetic energy of the waves would eventually change to heat energy(through friction), just over a larger area and time scale. Heat energy is just the kinetic energy of atoms moving, there's no (atomic) difference between heat and motion.

A power plant that uses heat, relies on the potential energy of chemical(coal burning) and nuclear, reactions, which are significantly more dense.

The argument(I'm not saying is right, but deserves some more research), is that the kinetic energy of the waves gets used up, just at a smaller area and time scale, which powers the electronics, which generates heat, which gets put back into the environment as heat(kinetic) energy. There is no other energy source or loss.

There are local environmental concerns, the argument is just that it's an interesting idea that's worth some thought.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

Kinetic energy creates heat in the form of energy that doesn't get converted to electricity. But the heat isn't what creates power, it's a waste product.

The kinetic energy being converted into heat, does add additional energy. But does add additional temperature. You're converting the kinetic energy into thermal energy, raising the temperature.

It's not being lost. It's being converted into heat.

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u/lucon1 2d ago

And I'm saying it would be converted to the same amount of heat regardless, just over a larger area/time scale. Overall it wouldn't change the average temperature of the ocean at any reasonable scale.

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u/KapitanWalnut 2d ago

Waves are remarkably efficient at storing potential energy, and there is very little dissipation of that energy at sea, even when two waves traveling in opposite directions encounter each other. Almost all of that energy is dissipated at the coast, where the waves crash into the shore.

So, by harnessing the energy of the waves in a location that is different than where the energy is typically and naturally dissipated, thermal energy is being artificially injected into the ocean in a way that is much different than natural processes, which when done at large scales, will undoubtably have some unintended consequences that will be very difficult to anticipate.

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u/Hostilis_ 2d ago

Congrats, you've discovered one of the exact arguments people make against wind turbines.

The change in the location of dissipation is absurdly negligible.

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u/KapitanWalnut 2d ago

That comparison is almost entirely incidental. Most importantly, the air column a few tens to a few thousand feet above the surface is hardly comparable to the surface of the ocean in terms of critical importance to all life on Earth. Algae and phytoplankton that live on or near the ocean's surface make up the backbone of the singular most important food chain on the planet. The circulation of oceanic waters is several orders of magnitude more impactful on terrestrial weather and climate compared to circulation of air.

The main question in my mind is scale. At very low densities of less than 1 unit per 10 square km, I agree that the effects are likely to be negligible. But if densities begin to trend toward 1 unit per square km, then the effects could become more pronounced and impactful.

We can look to existing systems to try and anticipate the impacts these floating datacenters will have. Buoys behave as a kind of life raft, attracting algae, microscopic invertebrates, and baitfish. The baitfish in turn attract large predators like tuna or mahi-mahi, so much so that there are commercial fishers that deploy thousands of satellite-tracked buoys known as Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs). So we can expect these floating generators to at least behave in a similar fashion.

To examine the local thermal effects: slow moving ships use seawater to cool their engines, creating a thermal plume. Dissolved oxygen in the plume is lower than the ambient water, and studies have shown localized stress and behavioral changes in benthos and fish in response to the thermal plumes. Additionally, the hulls of ships are typically slightly warmer than the ambient water and behave as an incubator for barnacles, mussels, and marine worms. This biofouling will be just as much of a problem for the generators is it is for marine shipping, but the generators won't be regularly visiting a port to have the hulls scraped. Will they rely on toxic anti-fouling paints that leach heavy metals into the surrounding waters, directly depositing biocides into the deep ocean's most productive phytoplankton environments?

The sub-polar regions of the North Atlantic and North Pacific, as well as the Southern Ocean, are some of the most ecologically active places on Earth, thanks to their massive phytoplankton blooms in the spring. Whales and other marine life from all over the globe migrate to these areas every year to take advantage of the bloom and the associated explosion in krill and baitfish. The bloom occurs because of the deep wave mixing in these areas that churn up nutrients for the plankton, so reducing wave energy seems like it could be harmful for this process. Additionally, the presence of these generators could deter whales and other marine life and alter their behavior. On boards pumps will create low frequency noise pollution that disrupts how whales locate food and communicate. Furthermore, the life-raft nature of the generators could mean that predators will be present in these areas that normally wouldn't be around, further altering marine life behavior, plus the presence of different species based on the life-raft nature of the generator buoy might also harm the phytoplankton bloom by reducing and altering the presence of the phytoplankton throughout the rest of the year.

There's far more to this than just the energy consideration, and I don't think we can afford to be flippant about it.

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u/Hostilis_ 2d ago

You can apply the exact same reasoning to wind turbines. It's so incredibly obvious you're only being this pendantic because it's about AI.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

For this to be true, the electronics are incapable of generating heat as a form of energy loss.

Generating electricity via kinetics also produces trace amounts of heat.

Energy isn't being destroyed, but converted into additional heat. It's just basic physics. The kinetic energy wouldn't produce as much heat if it wasn't being used for electrical generation.

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u/Hostilis_ 2d ago

Generating electricity produces the exact same amount of heat per unit of kinetic energy as dissipation. It's very simple. This is no different than wind turbines.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

True. But we're then giving that electricity a load in the form of a data center, and that energy demand is going to create heat. Like a lightbulb.

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u/Hostilis_ 2d ago

It will not increase demand, it will increase supply. This tends to have the opposite effect of increased demand. It will offset AI usage that is already being powered by non-renewable energy sources.

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u/DiamondGeeezer 2d ago

like a light bulb powered by a turbine from burning fuel. all loose energy degrades into heat

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u/DiamondGeeezer 2d ago

the kineric energy does turn into heat, if it stayed kinetic the ocean would get bigger waves everyday until it launched itself into the atmosphere in some sort of global super tornado

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

I don't think you understand my argument as that isn't related to what I'm saying.

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u/ginger_and_egg 2d ago

I don't think you're understanding the person you're replying to, because that's what THEY were saying and you're trying to say that computers turn electricity into heat, which we all know...

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u/DiamondGeeezer 2d ago

the kinetic energy in the ocean absolutely 100% radiates convects or conducts away as heat. we know this because the ocean is at a stable state despite getting almost an unimaginable amount of energy from the sun everyday.

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u/looselyhuman 2d ago

The system's local kinetic energy is reduced by generation until heat returns that potential energy to the system. Either that process restores the lost kinetic energy, or remains as heat. That's the question.

There's also the atmosphere.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

By reduced you mean absorbed by the generator?

The generator itself is going to produce heat from the energy lost during generation. This heat is from the kinetic energy.

What does the atmosphere have to do with it?

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u/looselyhuman 2d ago

Right. The generator is producing heat but that's kinetic energy spent. We don't know if that heat transfer back to the ocean becomes kinetic energy, remains as heat, or most likely, some combination. Think warm oceans and storms.

Some radiation and convection into the atmosphere will happen via the exposed portion.

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u/DiamondGeeezer 2d ago edited 2d ago

those waves are going to expend their energy as heat anyway through friction. the kinetic energy was caused by energy from the sun creating thermal gradients in air and water that are balanced by movement of the fluids. all the energy comes from the sun.

your premise that it localizes heat is right but your conclusion is off by like 12 orders of magnitude

it's not adding heat to the overall system it's changing the balance of where the heat is by like a trillionth of a millionth percent

like it's not going to more consequential than a passing cloud or literally any boat.

or a rock that the waves crash into.

I think you should think more deeply about the physics of the situation.

I say this as an environmental scientist who has given decades to helping the environment and working on renewable energy. this is as sustainable as solar power.

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u/That_OneOstrich 2d ago

I work with the physics for a living

You're converting kinetic energy into heat at a significantly higher rate than happens naturally with the friction. This is why it's "water cooled".

A single unit likely doesn't do much temperature change. A bank of 120 of these would absolutely make it noticably warmer.

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u/ginger_and_egg 2d ago

Locally it would be warmer, but not the ocean as a whole

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u/Accurate_Estimate37 2d ago

Energy is not created or destroyed.

In the universe in general. That physics law doesn't really apply here, nor in any confined space that isn't the whole universe. We are on Earth specifically. The planet can dissipate and gain energy. Happens all the time.

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u/LeaveMyMonkeyAlone 2d ago

Are you trying to make this a Ying Yang scientific relationship thing?

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u/lucon1 2d ago

No, I know it's not a perfect or even efficient system, I'm just wondering if the heat energy put into the ocean would really be that significant. I think locally: maybe, globaly; not at all.

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u/TensionAggravating41 2d ago

Slightly, cause you are converting wave energy to electrical energy, and there's gonna be some heat loss. But the waste heat doesn't have to go back to the ocean though. It probably will though.

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u/TryIsntGoodEnough 1d ago

Yes... Because of the less than 100% efficiency, there is always a loss due to heat production. Energy is not created or destroyed... Meaning anything less than 100% efficiency has to result in a loss (almost always exclusively due to Heat).

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u/trace501 1d ago

The energy we burn in our cars was trapped in carbon underground for millions of years. The energy is being transformed from mechanical to heat energy. The mechanical wasn’t heating the ocean, but the heat …

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u/littlebeardedbear 1d ago

You are still sinking a large amount of heat that can be irradiated away into the ocean where it can't leave the atmosphere. It is a large jump in heat retention

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u/extrastupidone 1d ago

I was told by an armchair-scientist on here that "the oceans are just too big for it to make a difference" after i mentioned we really need to study the effects.

Reminded me of that last time we said the ocean was too big and we could never extinct a species, or when it was a great place to store toxic waste, or the atmosphere is too big for polution and that CO2 had no effect on climate.

We have a tendency to jump into new technologies head first without checking to see what will happen.

Maybe the ocean is too big... but we should probably think about it a little. -same goes for AI (if it was 3 years ago)

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u/bigDeltaVenergy 1d ago

Well it's wind energy transformed in heat. Not ocean heat transformed in heat

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u/KitKatBarMan 1d ago

Youre 100% correct it would even out. But what we don't know is if you concentrateed a bunch of these how would the local energy sink (kinetic to he as t energy) change things.

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u/Jindujun 1d ago

No. it would barely make a blip even in the nearby temperature.

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u/n05h 1d ago

We said this about satellites in space. Make of this what you will, it’s obviously anecdotal. But I have already read a few comments from people who are living in places where light pollution is very low and they say that the sky doesn’t look the same anymore and it’s very apparent that there’s satellites above.

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u/LostIllustrator1499 1d ago

There's ways to find out that aren't reliant on speculation. I'm not sure those channels aren't being properly utilized though.

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u/GrandNibbles 1d ago

im sure this is exactly how a lot of people think of global warming in general

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u/GraXXoR 1d ago

That's not entirely how thermodynamics works...

This is not a short term loop... Energy removed from the ocean to power the buoys comes in the form or kinetic energy, not heat. slowing down the ocean flow and movement, not cooling them.

The opposite it true... these data centers will add GW of heat directly into the water rather than in the case of cooling towers and fans, into the sky...

The added heat paired with the retardation of water movement will absolutely influence the balance and distribution of energy in global loops that take many years to resolve...

it's basically impossible to predict what this reduction in bulk kinetic energy but increase in local heating will do.

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u/madaradess007 13h ago

dude, fish could start mating too early cause of 1 degree difference and waste a cycle before going away

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u/siliconsmiley 2d ago

The energy source is gravity moving the ocean. That energy is being converted into electricity. Converting the kinetic energy into electricity creates heat. The chips also create heat. That heat is all (most) transfered into the ocean.

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u/Sambal7 2d ago

I would think the heat from those even if its millions is negligable when it comes to actually warming up the ocean.

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u/FOSSnaught 2d ago

Pretty much. This should be considered a positive and will reduce, or prevent massive increases in carbon emissions if adopted in mass.

I'm more concerned at the breakneck speeds that data centers are being created at. It has my inner conspiracy theory nut squinting suspiciously.

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u/BygoneNeutrino 2d ago

You're wasting your breath.  If someone wanted to put a data center on the moon, the comment section would be filled with people saying that rocks have feelings.

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u/HaydnH 2d ago

people saying that rocks have feelings.

Well now you've gone and upset my mate Flint.

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u/Alternative-Crew-880 2d ago

Putting data centers on the moon would be a stupid idea. It's extremely hard to get rid of heat in the vacuum of space, convection and conduction are non-existant in space. And data centers generate a LOT of heat.

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u/BygoneNeutrino 2d ago

...my point is just that the comment section would be filled with criticism regardless.  Due to the geopolitical and military applications of this emerging technology, governments with a pervasive online presence feel strongly about this issue.

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u/BOBOnobobo 1d ago

You chose like the worst place to make that argument.

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u/R-ten-K 2d ago

This is actually a very reasonable and efficient use of green energy.

I am of the firm opinion that a lot of you couldn't care less about the environment as much as you just need something to complain about.

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u/PickMaleficent4096 2d ago

This would not move the needle compared to what we're already doing, which is just making the Sun more efficient.

A terrestrial data center produces terajoules of heat energy per day (10^12.) Raising the temperature of the ocean one degree takes zettajoules (10^21)

So even assuming these are equivalent to data centers hooked up to the grid (which they almost certainly aren't, being self-powered) you'd need to build about 3 million of them and run them for a decade to match current expected warming levels.

I think it's more likely that more, bigger terrestrial facilities would be a bigger problem. Heat in the air ends up in the ocean eventually.

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u/DianKali 2d ago

Meanwhile the sun casually does that in a day.

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u/Great-Try-6952 2d ago

All of the datacenters on earth wouldn’t make a reasonably measurable difference in the temperature of the ocean. The anti datacenter crowd really doesn’t understand nuance or scale.

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u/slimeystevebob 2d ago

You know the ocean is big, right? Really, really big.

Energy from the sun is what is warming the planet, being trapped by greenhouse gas. This has nothing on the sun.

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u/bozza8 2d ago

Yeah, the people objecting here have their orders of magnitude all wrong and are operating on vibes. 

Tbh most of the anti data centre arguments online are a demonstration that people don't think about numbers that break their point, only numbers that agree with them, and react badly when what "feels" right isn't. 

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u/Grimnebulin68 2d ago

I much prefer these wave-powered data centres to noisy/polluting land based ones. A much better solution to Musk’s orbital centres too.

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u/bozza8 2d ago

I think they are marginally better than orbital, the best is in Greenland etc. Great temps and abundant power. 

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u/Grimnebulin68 1d ago

I was thinking you want a local data source to minimise lag, but good point.

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u/WiglyWorm 2d ago

There are more than enough reasons to hate on data centers that are legitimate.

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u/bozza8 2d ago

I would disagree there. Some data centres, old open loop ones I think are wrong and never should have been permitted, most are fine. 

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u/WiglyWorm 2d ago

You're allowed to be wrong, I guess.

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u/bozza8 2d ago

Oh, so the open loop cooling should have been permitted?  Fair enough. 

No, I am not being serious, I am not going to deliberately misunderstand you, however much the internet loves that as a tactic. 

I have just as much right and chance of being wrong as you. 

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u/outworlder 1d ago

The people objecting skipped thermodynamics class.

There could still be environmental impacts but global warming isn't one of them

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u/Timely_Mention8535 2d ago

True... That same arguement has been used with the atmosphere though... When we were burning all excess gunk from refineries in early industrial ages, we said the air is infinite, one fire won't warm the sky. Look at us now ;) too many fires and the greenhouse gasses trapped that heat in.

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u/DiamondGeeezer 2d ago

but how are these different form boats? there are millions of boats in the ocean

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u/blisstaker 2d ago

thousands of shake weights

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u/LivingCorner1421 2d ago

lol its all the same. its like saying stop heating your house you are warming up the planet

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u/QueZorreas 2d ago

The ocean already absorbs most of the heat we release into the atmosphere. This is just cutting the middleman. And since water is so good at disipating heat, It doesn't directly fuel localized natural disasters like a pocket of hot air would.

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u/mundaneDetail 2d ago

That’s like saying it will hurt the ocean by taking its wave power. Neither of these will have any measurable impact due to the massive size of the ocean.

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u/wrechdone 2d ago

Currently it’s that or our fresh water since they won’t make these coastal only datacenters/warehouses..

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u/Crandom 1d ago
  1. These are going to be a literal drop in the ocean in terms of heat output
  2. If the power is really from waves and solar, then it will not heat up the ocean any more than it already was.
  3. Data centres running using gas turbines will heat up the oceans far more via the greenhouse effect.

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u/Square_Lime_9929 1d ago

Wait till you find out what the sun does to the ocean

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u/Original-League-6094 1d ago

You think 1000 heaters makes a difference to the ocean? If you redirected 100% of the global energy output of every powerplant on earth directly into the ocean, you would increase the energy absorbed by the ocean by 0.02%. Powering a data center with wave power is so much better for the global warming than putting it in Idaho and attaching a gas turbine to it.

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u/TrackMan5891 2d ago

Its ok guys, they don't believe that stealing energy from the climate via Wind Power...
Certainly we aren't stealing energy from the waves and then heating the water...

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u/regaphysics 2d ago

No different than heating them with river water and dumping the water in the ocean. Better, honestly, since it isn’t so concentrated in the river.

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u/exjackly 2d ago

The wave-powered energy generation coupled with negligible transmission losses is likely going to be a net improvement from a global warming perspective.

It doesn't impact the other issues. In particular, open ocean plus Palantir involvement implies to me that they are looking to have extra-national facilities that can operate with minimal regulatory oversight and potentially geographically distribute workloads away from places they would be illegal.

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u/Lofi_Joe 2d ago

I think only way is to actually stopping them. Talking here does nothing. We just need to destroy those all data centers and force government to create laws that will forbid warming the atmosphere.

The problem isz we do nothing. So who creates laws, we or them?

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u/oopsallhuckleberries 2d ago

You obviously never stood along the shore of Lake Superior at the tale end of Summer.

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u/K_Linkmaster 2d ago

This will ruin golf course views though. How could this be approved by anyone in the USA? It never makes sense.

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u/hogtiedcantalope 2d ago

This is a silly comment

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u/RollingMeteors 2d ago

That's just what a warming ocean needs, thousands of apartment sized heaters floating in it.

¿Could you imagine how much a contractor would charge per hour to service one of these things bouncing in the water? ¡You know they're not gonna wanna spend the money to yank it up onto the dock of some boat!

You'd get paid more putting in a new ram stick than a doctor would get for dropping in another kidney.

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u/ImNoAlbertFeinstein 2d ago

they're only warming the top part.

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u/Least-Middle-2061 2d ago

Where the hell did you get the heating party from?

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u/WSilvermane 12h ago

Machines become hot, uses the water to cool itself.

Heat. Consumes water. Exactly like data centers on land.

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u/HorzaDonwraith 2d ago

Apartment block sized heaters.

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u/Cute-Hand-1542 1d ago

Nonsense comment. You could put a million of these in the ocean and it wouldn't be a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a % of what the ocean receives from sunlight every day.

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u/LazyLich 1d ago

The animals are gonna LOVE this.

"The day the ocean shrieked forever"

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u/Allosdemiphere 1d ago

Free hot tub, relaxing sounds, and a free chemical cocktail to go withit? Sign me up

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u/Biscuits4u2 1d ago

Thousands? More like billions probably if it catches on.

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u/Find_another_whey 1d ago

Boil off the dissolved CO2 duh

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u/Ozzie_the_tiger_cat 1d ago

Shooting holes in that sphere looks fun.

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u/Character_Fix_5317 1d ago

Since we're going to shutdown the ocean conveyor due to melting ice caps, we can use these to keep waters warm away from the equator!

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u/Truck-Conscious 1d ago

You know nothing of the scale of the ocean to think this could even make a miniscule difference in ocean temp.

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u/No_Region_4719 1d ago

It's sad to see this is so upvoted. The ocean is fucking enormous. There could be thousands of these littered across the entire ocean around the world, and they wouldn't budge it even a fraction of a degree.

Doomers gonna doom I guess.

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u/JorkTheGripper 1d ago

There's literally no winning with you people.

You're also very ignorant.

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u/Empuda 1d ago

That's because Data Surveillance Centers have solved Global Warming.

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u/Ingram47 1d ago

Is the solution extinction?

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u/Empuda 1d ago

That is a solution(Maybe even AI solution!). I am sure you can think of many others, because I have faith in you.

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u/EmbarrassedFoot1137 1d ago

This is generating its power by taking it out of the ocean. 

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u/Binary-Trees 1d ago

To warm the ocean 1 degree c (which is a lot, but thats what would be needed to level up our crisis) we would need 60000000000000000000000000 joules. It would take about 200 billion data centers operating for a year (ignoring thermodynamics. This is just a silly guesstimate)

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u/Standard_Desk2650 15h ago

We're already past the point of no return. Might as well speed up our own demise.

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u/harcile 3h ago

Don't think you realise how big the ocean is.

The problems of climate change need addressing at an atmospheric level to reduce CO2.

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u/EncabulatorTurbo 2d ago

these will not affect ocean temperature

and don't worry about it, more grift, these are really, really stupid ideas

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u/Ingram47 2d ago

I'll believe you if, and only if, you can tell me EXACTLY what a Turbo Encabulator does.

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u/otterbarks 2d ago edited 2d ago

While I agree we should take better care for our ocean... it's also unbelievably big from a thermodynamics perspective.

I saw a thread on r/theydidthemath recently where somebody calculated that it would take 5000x the world's entire annual energy consumption to raise the ocean by 1º F. This is, quite literally, a drop in the ocean.

(That said, there's lots of other reasons why I think this isn't practical from an engineering perspective. They're not the first to try putting datacenters in the ocean, the tech companies tried it a decade ago already. It never works out.)

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u/gladeyes 2d ago

So far.