The U.S. Patent Office has awarded Google a patent for its proposal for a floating data center that uses the ocean to provide power and cooling. Google’s patent application was filed in Feb. 2007, published in October 2008 and approved on Tuesday (and quickly noted by SEO by the Sea).
The patent application describes floating data centers that would be located 3 to 7 miles from shore, in 50 to 70 meters of water. If perfected, this approach could be used to build 40 megawatt data centers that don’t require real estate or property taxes.
The Google design incorporates wave energy machines (similar to Pelamis Wave Energy Converter units) which use the motion of ocean surface waves to create electricity and can be combined to form “wave farms.” The patent documents describe a cooling system based on sea-powered pumps and seawater-to-freshwater heat exchangers.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
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