A gantry barge lifts the Project Natick pressure vessel from the water after its North Sea mission.

Project Natick

A research project to determine the feasibility of subsea datacenters powered by offshore renewable energy.

Facts and figures

Illustration of the Northern Isles subsea datacenter vessel.

Datacenter designation

Northern Isles (SSDC-002).

Illustration of a compass representing pressure vessel dimensions.

Pressure vessel dimensions

12.2 m long and 2.8 m in diameter; about the size of a 40-foot ISO shipping container.

Illustration of a tape measure representing subsea docking structure dimensions.

Subsea docking structure dimensions

14.3 m long and 12.7 m wide.

Illustration of a wind turbine representing renewable electricity.

Electrical power source

100% locally produced renewable electricity from on-shore wind and solar, and off-shore tide and wave.

Illustration of an electrical plug representing electrical power consumption.

Electrical power consumption

240 kW.

Illustration of server racks representing the datacenter payload.

Payload

12 racks containing 864 standard Microsoft datacenter servers with FPGA acceleration and 27.6 petabytes of disk.

Illustration of a globe with pins representing the deployment location.

Location

European Marine Energy Centre, Scotland, UK.

Illustration of a thermometer representing the internal operating environment.

Internal operating environment

One atmosphere of dry nitrogen.

Illustration of an hourglass representing time to deploy.

Time to deploy

Less than 90 days from factory to operation.

Illustration of a stopwatch representing planned maintenance-free operation.

Planned maintenance-free operation

Up to five years.