The demand for data centers is creating another opportunity for a renewable energy technology that is already making waves in the energy market.
As AI drives demand for ever-increasing amounts of electricity, Mocean Energy believes offshore data centers could provide another valuable market for wave energy.
The Scottish company is developing Blue Core, a modular offshore data center powered by wave energy and offshore solar, with integrated energy storage and computing capacity.
For Mocean Energy managing director Cameron McNatt, the concept is about more than putting wave energy to work in another application. It is about finding a market where the technology’s particular characteristics, reliable offshore power, proximity to ocean cooling and the ability to operate away from constrained grids, can give it an advantage over competing technologies.
“The challenge is to find the right business model, find the place where wave energy has a unique and strong value proposition compared to other renewables,” he says.
“The challenge with the traditional utility-scale energy market is that it is difficult to compete on a levelized cost of energy basis for a new technology.”
For Mocean, data centers could be that market.
Data center challenge
For McNatt, the opportunity for Blue Core begins with a problem facing the data center industry: access to sufficient electricity.
“The sort of power required for data centers has jumped by a factor of 10 in the past five years and it’s not that we as humans can’t build power stations, but it takes time, money and grid connections.”
As demand for computing capacity grows, developers are also facing challenges around land, social acceptance, water and cooling. Large data centers require significant infrastructure and can get push back from local communities.
“People don’t want these things around, and understandably so. They’re big, loud and use power and water.”
For Mocean, this creates an opportunity to rethink where data centers are located and how they are powered. Rather than bringing ever-increasing amounts of electricity to large facilities onshore, the company is proposing to move the computing infrastructure offshore, where it can be powered by ocean energy and take advantage of the ocean for cooling.
“It’s a natural progression to use this kind of core technology that we’ve developed in the very rigorous offshore oil and gas industry and transfer it to this other application.”
While the idea of harnessing wave power is not new, McNatt believes the data center boom could provide the technology with the kind of high-value application it needs to compete.
Barriers to AI growth
Blue Core is Mocean’s data center concept that builds on the company’s Blue Star offshore power system – it aims to solve key barriers to AI infrastructure growth.
It’s designed around modular units rated at around 500kW to 1MW, enough to run a handful of GPU racks. Multiple units can be deployed alongside each other in what McNatt describes as a data centre farm.
Their plan is for farms of 100s of units, deployed in a daisy-chain configuration and connected by fiber-optic cables with multiple farms deployed around the world, connected virtually to create GW’s of hyperscale-level facilities.
The use of low Earth orbit satellites also means the facilities would not need to be tied to a single location. Instead, farms could be deployed wherever there is a suitable wave resource, from Scotland to Western Australia or the US West Coast and connected virtually.
“The farms can be located anywhere where there’s a good wave environment and linked virtually to create a kind of global hyperscale-level facility.”
Shape of innovation
According to McNatt, the innovation at the heart of Mocean’s technology lies in the shape of its wave energy converter.
Rather than trying to make the device as stable as possible in the water, Mocean has designed it to respond dynamically to the waves. Its distinctive nose-down hull geometry allows the device to move with the waves and, as a result, capture more energy.
“When waves get too big, it will naturally dive through the waves just like you do if you’re swimming out through the surface zone. You dive under the waves to avoid slamming.”
That ability to operate in challenging marine environments has been shaped in part by Mocean’s experience working offshore in Scotland, where the oil and gas industry created a significant demand for relatively small amounts of reliable power.
Subsea equipment, for example, can require power far from the shore or an offshore facility, resulting in 10 to a 100 kilometers of cables carrying relatively small amounts of electricity along the seabed. A floating offshore wind turbine would be too expensive for this small amount of power and a solar array may not provide enough.
Wave energy can be scaled perfectly to meet this power demand.
“We have been working with industry to develop a solution. And while it’s been challenging developing a solution for the oil and gas industry, the experience has helped us develop robust clean power solutions.”
That experience has also highlighted that generating electricity is only part of the challenge when operating offshore.
“Generating power is table stakes; you have to do that. What’s hard is making it robust, reliable and survivable in extreme seas, while dealing with corrosion and marine growth.”
The equipment must also be safe, straightforward to operate and as cost-effective as possible. These considerations are now central to Mocean’s thinking as it applies its offshore expertise to data center infrastructure.
The result is a proposition that goes beyond simply selling wave-generated electricity. Mocean is considering a number of ways to commercialize Blue Core, including building and owning the offshore facilities and renting out their computing capacity.
“Or we could build and install our own compute and work with a partner to sell GPU-as-a-service in various markets, such as the on-demand market.
“That’s the business model we’re working with right now because it has the highest risk-reward ratio.”
Challenging maintenance
McNatt explains that the main concern is whether the GPUs will be able to operate reliably in an offshore environment and how challenging maintenance will be – key considerations when a test unit is deployed next year.
Managing corrosion and the response to motion are also important elements.
Mocean is working to mitigate these risks.
For corrosion, the data center element will sit inside a sealed, nitrogen-filled environment to keep moisture out. The system is also designed to avoid the slamming and high-acceleration shock loads typically associated with offshore structures.
“It moves with long-period waves. We’re talking kind of sinusoidal harmonic motions on the order of 10-second periods.”
That means the system does not experience high-frequency vibration, McNatt explains.
Maintenance presents a different challenge. Unlike an onshore data center, where a failed GPU can be replaced immediately, accessing individual GPUs offshore will be more difficult, particularly given current GPU failure rates of around 3 to 5%.
Mocean’s answer is to design for “graceful degradation”, allowing individual GPUs or racks to go offline without taking down the wider facility. When maintenance is required, the modular unit can be brought back to shore, with the rest of the data center farm continuing to operate.
The company is also exploring autonomous propulsion and installation. Initially, conventional vessels such as multi-cats would tow the units to shore, but eventually the system could be capable of disconnecting from its moorings and returning for maintenance without human intervention.
“That way, we can do operations and maintenance much more frequently at a lower cost in higher environmental, higher wave-height conditions.”
This approach will also influence the type of computing workloads Blue Core targets, with AI inference expected to be central to the unit’s design and development.
Computing infrastructure
For McNatt, the excitement and appeal of his work extends beyond Blue Core.
It’s about how computing infrastructure will be powered in the future.
“Engaging with AI and data centers is like being a part of this humongous revolution. It’s going to be one of the most significant things that happens in our lifetime.”
But as data center demand accelerates, McNatt believes it is equally important to consider where that infrastructure is built and how it will impact communities and the environment – a consideration that emphasizes the potential role of Blue Core.
The concept is still at an early stage and Mocean is collecting data and modelling the potential of the technology,
The next stage will be about proving that the concept can work – technically, operationally and commercially – and finding the partners to help scale it.
“If you’re interested in working with us, please do reach out and get in touch,” concludes McNatt.
Originally published in Factor This sister publication Enlit World.