centers

The argument of job creation has been the great asset to build data centers. It would be nice if it were true

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data centers they consume a lot of electricitymaking raise the electricity bill, they pollute the air and sometimes water too. There are more and more arguments against them, while the arguments in favor for those who live near one of these mastodons are basically reduced to one: they generate many jobs. Sure? What is happening. The United States concentrates a third of all data centers in the world. They count in Futurism that there are states competing to attract big technology companies, offering resources and tax exemptions in exchange for them generating jobs and helping to develop their communities. However, it is increasingly clear that the creation of stable and lasting employment is an unfulfilled promise. Billions for a handful of jobs. In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, there are two projects underway for two data centers from QTS and Google respectively. As reflected in the Cedar Rapids Economic Development Centerto encourage the construction of these infrastructures, the city has offered them a 70% exemption from property taxes for 20 years, in addition to returning 75% of electricity rates (a municipal surcharge that is applied to the bill). Google and QTS are going to spend 1.3 billion on their data centers, but it is estimated that they will save more than 580 million on taxes and municipal fees. And you will say how many jobs are they going to create? Under the contract, they are only required to create 61 permanent jobs. Why is it important. Data centers have become the engine of the American economy, but one thing is the wild investment of big tech to build them and the impact on local employment is quite another. They are enormous infrastructures, which cost a lot of money, but once launched they operate practically on autopilot. The tasks that really need human intervention are very few compared to their magnitude. In Aragon too. This situation is not exclusive to the United States, the same thing is also happening in Aragon. We recently learned the employment figures that Amazon will generate in Villanueva del Gállegowhere they are building six data centers. The company had spoken of up to 29,900 full-time positions linked to the project, but they were counting indirect and induced employment, such as suppliers and associated services. The reality is that between six data centers, they are going to hire only 180 permanent people who will work in shifts so that they can operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Once again, the narrative of mass employment is leaking everywhere. Employment yes, but temporary. To build data centers of that magnitude, many companies from different sectors must move, which indirectly does generate a lot of employment. In the case of Cedar Rapids, the city boasts that the projects will create “thousands of construction and trades jobs,” the problem is what will happen to all of them when the data center comes online. According to a recent report by Turner & Townsend echoed in Futurism, the urgency to build new data centers has caused prices to rise in other projects such as housing construction, in addition to monopolizing specialized labor in construction areas. Image | Xataka with Magnific In Xataka | While most oppose AI data centers, there is one group enthusiastic about them: merchandise thieves

let data centers pollute without limit

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The summer of 2026 started strong with the first extreme heat wave. We have talked about the heat in Spain and throughout Europebut in the United States they have not been spared either of the consequences. With the air conditioners working at full capacity In homes, the electrical grid is strained and the Secretary of Energy made a decision that directly affects data centers. Activate your generators. The heat wave reached its peak last week and mainly hit the US East Coast. Given this situation, the secretary of energy Chris Wright asked data centers and other large customers to begin using their backup generators, which are normally idle. The objective of this measure is to relieve pressure on the electrical grid, which has experienced an increase in demand caused by high temperatures that have touched 40 degrees in many states. Why is it important. The order demonstrates how data centers are impacting the US power supply, especially in the mid-Atlantic area, where it is concentrated the largest number of data centers in the world. According to Data Center Map dataIn the United States there are more than 4,300 data centers and in Virginia alone there are 637. In other affected states there is also a high concentration: 133 in New York, 133 in Pennsylvania, 93 in North Carolina, 67 in New Jersey, 53 in Maryland and 42 in Massachusetts. Air quality. The biggest loser with this measure is the environment. We are talking about diesel and natural gas generators that emit pollutants such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and generate suspended particles. The use of these types of generators is limited by their effects on air quality, e.g. In Texas only its use is authorized provided that “the operating time does not exceed 10% of the annual operation of the main power source.” According to a Washington Post analysisin the state of Virginia there are at least 10,500 diesel generators installed. It is estimated that just using them for one hour a week has a health impact equivalent to that of five large gas plants combined and is associated with thousands of asthma episodes each year. Regulatory exception. The Department of Energy already had these limitations and In their directive they authorize connect these generators “without prejudice to air quality limitations.” It is a temporary decision designed to protect the stability of the network and the thermal comfort of millions of homes, but it does not come for free. The order sets an uncomfortable precedent: if environmental regulations are turned off every time there is extreme stress on the grid, the exception may end up becoming the new normal. Without batteries. The manager that offers supply in the area is PJM and last week it surpassed the demand record that occurred two decades ago. As they say in the New York TimesPJM does not have an extensive battery system that allows them to store energy to be used in situations like this. In other states such as California or Texas they do have this type of systems, which allows them to face heat waves or frosts without having to resort to measures of this type. Image | Generac In Xataka | Giant data centers have a space and power problem. A company wants to cut them up and distribute them around the houses

While most oppose AI data centers, there is one group enthusiastic about them: merchandise thieves

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In the United States, at least a third of all data centers of the world. With investment reaching insane levelseach time they are built larger and more powerful infrastructures Unfortunately for the neighbors, who report an increase in pollution, increases in the electricity bill and problems with water supply. While all this is happening, there is a small sector of the population that has seen a business opportunity: thieves. What’s happening. They tell it in Business Insider. Last week in Illinois, police recovered two truckloads of stolen data center equipment. First they found a trailer containing $300,000 in coils of copper cable at a truck yard in Chicago. Later, they discovered that the same person who left the trailer had stored another one a week before and here came the bombshell: the second trailer contained material worth 1 million dollars. It is not the only theft of this type that has happened recently. At the beginning of the month they had The Canadian Press about $5 million worth of data center materials were disappearing while “in transit.” The containers left the port and were listed as having been picked up by the supposedly legitimate carriers, but never reached their destination. Why is it important. The data center boom is creating a supply chain of very valuable materials, especially DRAM chips and memories, but also metals such as copper. Organized crime is no stranger to this and has begun to attack these infrastructures that are so present in the US. Furthermore, they are using the very technology they are stealing from to achieve successful operations. Theft of merchandise. They say in Futurism that the US Department of Homeland Security estimates the theft of merchandise in losses of 35,000 million dollars a year. These gangs often attack retail trade, intercepting goods before they reach stores such as sports equipment from Nike. More sophisticated. Speaking to the Canadian Press, the head of the venture company Verisk CargoNet states that “The bad guys are very good at marketing (…) Now it is much more strategic, much more specific… They know what is in fashion and what sells well.” In the case of the 5 million theft that we mentioned before, the thieves used generative AI and other tools to impersonate a real transportation company and manipulate systems and communications. For days, it seemed like everything was going well and by the time they realized the deception it was too late. Image | Xataka with Magnific In Xataka | The iPhone is one of the most coveted pieces by street thieves. Apple wants to make it more difficult for you

Nvidia’s solution to reduce water consumption in data centers to zero aims to be genius: use hot water

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Nvidia has announced a system of liquid cooling very special. Above all, because the concept of “refrigeration” is a bit confused here. The company has managed to reinvent this type of systems, and according to those responsible “the challenge of water consumption for data centers it is practically solved.” That’s saying a lot… or isn’t it? Jacuzzi cooling. The own Nvidia engineers They begin the description of their system by talking about how in jacuzzis the water is usually between 38 and 40 ºC, a temperature that makes most people last about 15 minutes in them. And the funny thing is that Nvidia’s new AI servers can use liquid cooling with water that is even hotter: up to 45ºC (113ºF). That is precisely the key to making the entire system efficient. Goodbye to fans. Nvidia’s new Rubin architecture claims to be the first in the world with an end-to-end liquid cooling system. At Nvidia they seal the server boards and eliminate noisy fans that shoot noise levels above 85 decibels. Elementary physics. The concept behind this idea is counterintuitive, but also brilliant. The chips generate so much heat that a liquid composed of 75% water and 25% propylene glycol entering at 45ºC is capable of absorbing the thermal load dissipated by these chips. The fluid absorbs that heat and ends up leaving the circuit at around 55ºC without the performance of the processor degrading at all. Good for 45ºC. The key is that Nvidia starts from that starting temperature of the water, which is 45º. In a liquid cooling circuit in PCs, the liquid is usually between 25 and 30 ºC. Here Nvidia manages to ensure that with this initial temperature the thermal difference with the outside air is high enough for the system to work passively in most temperate climates. The heat is expelled by gigantic external radiators. Water is only needed on the first fill. Even more interesting is the fact that this water circuit only needs to be filled once for the entire useful life of the plant, at least in theory. This eliminates traditional systems that use evaporative cooling towers. These systems consume enormous amounts of water, and according to Nvidia this makes it possible to cut water consumption of data centers by almost 100%. But. Although Nvidia’s idea is promising, the company only talks about what happens within the four walls of data centers. The impact internally in the data center is extraordinary, but what about outside? The problem, they explain on TechCrunchis that data centers they need a lot of energyand both the generation of that energy and the creation of the chips themselves used in data centers can fold either triple to the consumption of the data center itself. The gas and coal bill. Although renewable energies are increasingly covering a greater part of the needs in these data centersthe use of coal and natural gas will continue to be very notable in these facilities. According to the International Energy Association (IEA), these two sources will continue to represent 40% of the total used in AI data centers until at least 2030. And the generation of both types of energy requires vast quantities of water: natural gas plants they use 1.17 liters of water for every kWh of electricity they generate. Coal ones are even worse, requiring 2.2 liters per kWh. Good news, but not so good. The system devised by Nvidia can solve the problem within data centers and is even promising when it comes to reduce noise levels generated by these facilities. However, there are still equally important challenges to ensure that water consumption in other phases of this cycle is not so colossal. It is a good step, without a doubt, but the room for improvement is still notable in this area. In Xataka | Jensen Huang has taken a look at the idea of ​​putting data centers in space and has come to one conclusion: let’s not freak out

We already know how much water Amazon consumes in its data centers. We have good and bad news

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amazon has made public the data of water consumption in their data centers. It is a remarkable exercise in transparency, especially because its division Amazon Web Services (AWS) It is currently the largest cloud infrastructure on the planet. We have bad news… and also good news. 2.5 billion gallons. The figure that stands out the most in this report is the 2.5 billion gallons (almost 9.5 billion liters) of water consumed by its servers per year. It is approximately 5% of the annual water consumption for the Seattle metropolitan area, so this is a notable figure, but one that must be put in perspective because there have already been previous studies that they misunderstood the situation. Golf courses are worse. The company already stated a few weeks ago that “data centers use significantly less water than golf courses or car washes.” They also gave other examples that consume more water, such as the meat production industry or the textile production industry. The efficiency metric. A metric called water use effectiveness (or WUE) is used to measure the impact of a data center. This magnitude indicates the liters consumed for each kilowatt-hour of energy delivered to the servers. According to Amazon, its WUE is 0.18 liters per kWh, much better than Microsoft’s 0.27 l/kWh and of course the 1.1 l/kWh from Google in some of its facilities. It is clear that not all hyperscalers manage to cool their data centers with the same efficiency. Amazon spends a lot of water in its data centers, yes, but according to current data it consumes significantly less than its rivals. Physics is physics. Data centers generate enormous amounts of waste heat, and Amazon indicates that they use direct evaporative cooling systems. Instead of maintaining huge air conditioning systems, the company uses mechanisms that introduce outside air and pass it through humid panels. This allows water to evaporate, absorb heat and cool those rooms where the servers are. The toll exists, of course: evaporated water is lost to the atmosphere and cannot be immediately reused in local ecosystems, which causes pressure drops in surrounding reserves during heat waves. Geography helps. Amazon’s efficiency advantage also benefits from intelligent geographic location of its data centers, the company says. Many of them are in regions with temperate or cold climates in the northern hemisphere. In these areas, cooling by outside air (free cooling) you can take advantage of more than 80% of the days of the year. In contrast, its competitors have often been forced to create their data centers in very hot desert environments which require injecting pressurized water constantly. Promises on one hand, criticism on the other. To compensate this impact due to your water consumptionAmazon has committed to returning more water than it consumes to local communities by 2030. This policy, dubbed “water positive“groups initiatives ranging from the restoration of watersheds to the creation of wastewater treatment plants. Of course, all this discourse faces strong criticism. For these voices, what Amazon is doing is a facelift, but it does not fix the immediate local shortage of wells from which data centers extract water in the middle of summer. The problem persists. Amazon’s report is welcome because it breaks the silence that usually prevails in Silicon Valley regarding natural resources. Even so, it also shows that the world faces a notable problem if the water (and energy) consumption problems generated by data centers cannot be solved. Taking into account the ambition and multimillion-dollar projects of AI companies In this sense, it would be important for official organizations to be in charge of monitoring and regulating these gigantic consumptions. Image | amazon In Xataka | Data centers do not want to depend on the conventional electrical grid. Solution: build your own plants

Space data centers seem crazy. They make a lot more sense than it seems

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“Space, the final frontier” became a classic pop culture phrase thanks to the series Star Trek. Now there are those who complete it with “… data centers”, because that is what Elon Musk certainly wants to achieve, and he has a plan to achieve it. At first glance it seems crazybut it turns out that the idea is not at all crazy. Free cooling, nothing. As explained in a very deep report in Semianalysismany analysts support the idea by defending erroneous premises. The space, for example, does not offer free cooling. Since there is no atmosphere, heat is not dissipated by convection, and huge and expensive thermal radiators are necessary. Solar energy is also interrupted in low orbits (LEO), so satellites must be placed in sun-synchronous orbits, a resource that is beginning to become saturated. The current cost does not compensate. The analysis carried out in this study for the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for a currently standard 30.5 kW cluster (with two servers with 16 Nvidia B300 GPUs) does not add up. Deploy this infrastructure In space it is necessary to invest 4.1 million dollars, when doing the same on Earth costs 1.4 million dollars. Space data centers are currently 260% more expensive than on the planet’s surface. Bad business. Space transportation makes everything more expensive. He biggest problem What affects these costs is the costs of transporting the material to space. In that proposed example, of the $3.1 million total cost of space infrastructure, $1.6 million is due to launch. But there is also the problem of the useful life of this data center: on Earth these facilities pay for themselves in 15 years, but in space wear and radiation in orbit reduce the operational life of the particular satellite to only five years, which multiplies those capital expenses dedicated to the project almost by 20. The first bottleneck is the chips. Even solving these problems, the main obstacle is simply semiconductor manufacturing capacity. The demand for TSMC’s N3 wafers and the supply of HBM memories is much higher than the supply even without this idea of ​​​​space data centers. That would add even more demand to an absolutely saturated system. But there is also the (lack of) energy. The reason why Musk wants to promote this idea as soon as possible is that obtaining power supply for terrestrial data centers is increasingly complicated. Thus, getting a connection to the electrical grid in Virgnia (USA) already takes seven years. Companies are creating their own power generation plants to solve this problem. Even so, according to the study, it will become increasingly more expensive to access this supply: they estimate that the cost of “terrestrial energy” will be above 20 million dollars per MW when this decade ends. That’s why Terafab. To solve this first bottleneck, Elon Musk has launched its colossal Terafab project in Austin. It is a huge chip manufacturing factory that will need 10 GW of electrical power to produce one million semiconductor wafers each month. The plan takes into account that 80% of the chips produced are destined precisely for space data centers. Starship changes the equation. But Starship stands in front of all these problems. SpaceX hopes to be able to reduce launch costs significantly in the coming years, going from the current $1,400-1,800 per kilo for the Falcon 9 to just $250 per kg for the Starship. This, together with the improvement in radiator and solar panel technology, will reduce the cost gap with terrestrial infrastructure. Now it is 260% more expensive, but at the beginning of the next decade it will be only 30% more expensive and will achieve economic parity by 2040. But. The accounts could therefore come out in the medium term, but it is necessary to take into account other factors as the so-called long-term computing cost. On Earth, between 3% and 6% of GPUs in data centers fail each year and require manual replacement by a technician. In space that option disappears, so it is necessary to oversize the satellites with 20% chips to provide redundancy and thus absorb potential radiation failures. In Xataka | Aragón is quietly becoming a data center “powerhouse” – now it has taken a crucial step

If the question is whether AI data centers end up increasing temperatures in a region, the answer is: 2.2ºC

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A group of researchers from Arizona State University have published a study striking. They wanted to estimate the impact of AI data centers on the average temperatures of the region in which they are installed. Their conclusion is disturbing, because this increase can be up to 2.2 ºC. The massive use of AI raises another problem. There is already a clear debate about the water and energy consumption of AI data centers, but this study has focused on an equally important problem: thermal pollution. It’s hot. The researchers focused on the Phoenix metropolitan area, the hottest in the entire US. There, their analyzes indicated that data centers expel air from their cooling systems at temperatures that are between 14 and 25 degrees Fahrenheit above ambient temperature, creating thermals that can affect nearby neighborhoods. The air says it all. This is the first known research to use high-precision vehicle-mounted sensors to compare air temperature before and after passing through the facility. The data was clear: Downwind areas of a data center had average temperatures 1.6ºF higher, with peaks of 4ºF (2.2ºC) compared to the reference areas. Heat island effect. The impact of this increase in temperature is also notable in terms of the distance affected: these increases were detected even 500 meters away from the source, which is equivalent to about five “blocks” of homes in the city of Phoenix. Vicious circle. The very design of data centers causes this problem to feed into itself. A single data center can generate as much waste heat as a small city of 40,000 homes, and the vicious cycle is clear: The data center blows very hot air to cool its servers The air warms the surrounding neighborhood Neighbors use their air conditioners more Air conditioners expel even more waste heat Location is the key. David Sailor, who led the study, indicated that what they seek with their conclusions is not to prohibit data centers, but to rethink their integration with urban centers. To avoid or mitigate problems, solutions are proposed such as reorienting air outlets or creating parks that cushion these increases in temperature. The key, these researchers say, is urban planning: these facilities must be treated as sources of industrial thermal emissions, because that is what they are. Prevent before cure. The projected computing capacity for data centers to be built in the US will double in 2030, which according to this study makes it necessary to take action. The challenge, they say, is to apply these solutions before the waste heat generated by data centers becomes a public health problem. Spain may also have that problem. Projects that affect our country should also take this circumstance into account. In recent months we have seen how the Autonomous Community of Aragón has focused part of the protagonism of agreements with large technology companies, and both Amazon and Microsoft have data centers planned in the metropolitan area of ​​the city of Zaragoza. The towns of Villamayor de Gállego and Villanueva de Gállego are less than 20 km from Zaragoza, and both already have data centers planned. These initiatives promise to boost the region’s economy, but they also bring doubts. Not everyone is in favor of such centers, of course, and there are even judicial processes trying to stop its construction. Image | David Vives and AWS In Xataka | The great paradox of Madrid: the region with the largest energy deficit in Spain is losing the data centers

After deploying its data centers in Aragon, Amazon wants to protect Zaragoza from floods

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On July 6, 2023, a torrential storm collapsed the Barranco de la Muerte in Zaragoza, leaving the Z-30 under two meters of water and causing damage valued at 125 million euros, as collects The Herald. Among the affected structures, the high-speed train between Madrid and Barcelona and the capital’s main ring road. This natural disaster made it clear that Zaragoza lacked hydraulic infrastructure capable of absorbing extreme weather events, increasingly frequent with climate change, such as explains AEMET. In response, the City Council made a plan structured in three phases and began conversations with Amazon Web Services, the hyperscaler that Aragón has chosen for its data centers in Spain: the result is a public-private alliance that combines hydraulic infrastructure and real-time monitoring technology with the aim of turning Zaragoza into a European benchmark for urban resilience. Zaragoza, flood-proof. The Zaragoza City Council and AWS with the collaboration of the Government of Aragon and the Ebro Hydrographic Confederation have agreed implement a global technological and hydraulic strategy for environmental risk management. Amazon will contribute 13.8 million euros, distributed in three annual installments. The collaboration has two legs: a physical one, with the construction of hydraulic infrastructure in the Barranco de la Muerte; and another technological, with the deployment of an intelligent early warning platform based on the AWS cloud. Why is it important. This system will benefit more than 700,000 people who live in the Aragonese capital, in addition to protecting critical infrastructure for the city such as the Z-30, the train and entire neighborhoods such as Parque Venecia, today exposed to intense storms. Beyond the scope of the work, this is one of the few cases in Spain where a large technology company directly finances public civil protection infrastructure as a condition of its installation in the territory, which puts a question on the table: what the companies that consume the most resources can and should contribute to the cities that host them. Context. AWS maintains one of the largest investment plans in digital infrastructure in Spain: in 2024 announced an investment of 15.7 billion euros in Aragon over the next decade to expand its cloud infrastructure and new data center campuses in Villanueva de Gállego, El Burgo de Ebro and Huesca. This expansion has a B side: enormous pressure on the territory’s electrical, water and transportation networks. The Barranco de la Muerte is not an isolated case: the Valencia DANA of October 2024 left more than 220 dead and politically accelerated the demand for drainage infrastructure in vulnerable urban areas. Zaragoza, with active ravines and a climate prone to intense convective storms, is one of them. How are they going to do it?. From the point of view of hydraulic works, it is a lamination of avenues combined with sustainable urban drainage enhanced with real-time monitoring. The plan is divided into three technical phases. The first, financed by the council and already underway, consists of a perimeter canal and a retaining wall around the Barranco de la Muerte. The second, financed by AWS, adds a storm tank next to the Torrero Cemetery with a capacity for 20,000 cubic meters, five lamination dams and the improvement of the existing ones upstream of Z-40. The third would bury the ravine as it passes through Z-30 with a collector that would double the current drainage capacity. Added to this is a cloud platform that will combine sensors, artificial intelligence and real-time analysis to monitor flows and launch early warnings. That is to say: the physical infrastructure retains and laminates the water, and the technological infrastructure anticipates when and how much will arrive. AWS support is not only financial: it provides digitalization and predictive hydraulics that multiply the effectiveness of physical infrastructure. Yes, but. The collaboration is a real advance for the city, but it raises uncomfortable questions. The first is obvious: Amazon does not pay for these works out of altruism: its data centers in Aragon are voracious consumers of water and energy, so building water infrastructure in the city is a win-win: it minimizes the risk of supply failures in the event of potential natural disasters and improves its image while strengthening ties with the authorities. Water management is one of the thorny points of data centers and with its proliferation increases scrutiny and protests over the consumption of a scarce good, such as Amazon has already suffered itself in Aragon. On the other hand, for the alert technological platform to be useful, it will be an essential requirement that it be accompanied by proven evacuation and response protocols, which turns an alert into a real solution. How they plan to do it is something that has not been publicly disclosed at the moment. In Xataka | Zaragoza is so full of data centers that Amazon has decided to take one to… a town in Teruel with 900 inhabitants In Xataka | Quietly, Aragón is becoming a data center “powerhouse”: now it has taken a crucial step Cover | David Vives and AWS

China is launching giant buoys into the sea that are real “small” fortified data centers. Korea won’t like it

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Ocean observation is an essential activity to monitor climate change, navigation and the security of the planet, however 95% of internet data travels therethe sighting of ghost ships is the order of the day and we continue found new islands. Until now, the quintessential element for monitoring the sea has been floating sensors that everyone knows: buoys, a legacy of the analog world. In that calm calm China has invaded with its Sea Dragon (Hailong) series, a new generation of enormous buoys that mark a before and after in scale, design and functionality. Of course, they have nothing to do with that mooring that has reigned in naval engineering since the Second World War. The new Chinese buoy. The Hailong series are literally small disk-shaped fortified data stations. Although small is relative: its diameter is around six meters in diameter and as a structure it looks more like a small unmanned oil platform than conventional buoys. After completing the relevant tests at sea, it has already been integrated into the Yellow Sea observation network to continuously and real-time monitor the entire water column, according to the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. When deploying the new buoy, technicians simultaneously removed an older buoy after 16 years of service. A deliberate symbolic gesture insofar as it is not a mere change of buoy: according to the Institute it is “the world’s first system with a single disc side anchor structure”, leaving behind the classic central mooring point that has dominated Western marine engineering since World War II. Why is it important. The problem with the design of classic buoys is mechanical and well known: when a buoy with a central mooring rotates due to currents and wind, the cables coil and generate structural and instrumentation failures. This new lateral disc anchorage solves the root problem because it uses another geometry, thus minimizing these errors, operating with more stability. That is, the importance lies in the continuity of the data. The second reason is strategic. The Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences I had already tried other synchronized observation systems capable of covering from 10 kilometers of atmosphere to 1 kilometer of depth underwater, withstanding winds of 60 m/s and waves of up to 20 meters, powered by various energy sources (wave, solar, wind, hybrid). This new buoy transfers these capabilities to especially sensitive waters. It is, in short, a buoy designed to be operational for the long term. Context. Since the 1940s, the world standard for buoys has been defined by US Navy designs, such as the NOMAD (Navy Oceanographic Meteorological Automatic Device) type. For the time, these devices complied thanks to their simplicity and ease of deployment, although due to their physics they are vulnerable to excessive swinging. If there is serious surf, precision measurements get dirty. Over the years this standard has met precisely because it complied, its maintenance is low and other alternatives present challenges to its deployment. But China, driven by its need to control the South China Sea and the Western Pacific, has chosen to redesign the platform from scratch. In fact, China and Korea have a fishing agreement in the Yellow Sea dating back to 2001 where permanent installations are expressly prohibited. So China has fulfilled it in its own way: since then it has deployed 13 buoys, two large aquaculture cages and a maintenance platform. Analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) qualify this strategy of “progressive sovereignty”. How they have done it. The development is led by the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which has been testing real-time transmission mooring systems since 2016. The new buoy is, therefore, the result of a decade of development, not a technological leap that arrives overnight. The secret of its design is the topology: moving the anchor point from the geometric center of the disc to the side eliminates the twisting moment produced by the entanglement of cables in the classic design. Instead of a wave-riding hull, the body is designed with a narrow cross-section at the waterline and deep ballast, which noticeably reduces hydrodynamic forces. For energy management, photographs published by the South Korean navy last year show models with solar panels that, assisted by artificial intelligence for data management and instrument optimization. The result is a platform that shines for its autonomy and resilience, since it can operate continuously in adverse sea conditions without human intervention. Yes, but. From a technical and geopolitical point of view, this deployment has a double reading: China’s official description presents these buoys as tools for the study of climate change and tsunami warning, but inherently this infrastructure is dual: if it integrates sonar and can process data in real time, it can also function as a war and control tool. On the other hand, the deployment of these intelligent platforms in disputed waters has its drawback from the point of view of international maritime law since they are complex and almost permanent structures. In other words, it is like putting a pike there. In Xataka | The United States is launching giant spheres into the sea with one goal: to take advantage of one of the largest sources of renewable energy In Xataka | A buoy from Mallorca has revealed the meteorological problem that Spain faces: the Mediterranean Sea is on fire

As Europe builds data centers to achieve independence, its power grid enters the hunger games

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Europe finds itself at a crossroads. If you listen to the CEO of Mistral, you should start investing big to stop being the technological vassal of the United States. That implies investing and part of that investment is in data centers. But American Big Tech is also moving and, if in the US they find frontal opposition to the construction of data centersthey move and there are countries like Spain that are favorite destinations. But there’s a huge problem: it’s not so much about money as it is about energy. And European macroplans are colliding with the reality of the electricity grid. Full speed ahead. The United States has the most brutal data centers on the planetbut Europe has a plan to arm itself and achieve that technological sovereignty. The plan goes through energy thanks to geothermal energy and, above all, renewables. Europe is a power in this and Spain has already shown its plumage to attract European and Big Tech data centers. esteem that there are 5,400 in the US and 3,400 in Europe, and Europe wants to close the gap. There is a very small problem: renewables are not enough to satisfy the voracity of data centers. We are constantly seeing it: data centers need constant power, but when they enter intense computing phases, the expense is so high that they need energy spikes that renewables cannot satisfy. That’s where they come into play. nuclear, gas and even coaland a Europe that cannot play that due to environmental policies is where it has its weak point. Spain. There are several points to analyze. As we say, Spain is one of the countries that is presenting itself as one of the best assets to host data centers. Aragon, specifically, is a community that is pushing hard in this direction and serves as an example. AWS is going to put some gigantic data centers in the community, adding more than 10,800 GWh of energy per year. To contextualize, it is more than all the current electricity consumption of the community. But it is not only happening in Aragon and the fear is that the saturated Spanish electricity grid will now have to deal with those data centers that they can collapse the network. He blackout ghost it’s still there and it’s already been warned in the Official State Gazette that an increase in installations that are not capable of withstanding voltage dips pose a very high risk for the network. the hunger games. Because first the principles of agreement came and, now, the different EU countries are realizing that, perhaps, it is not such a good idea. One of the most recent cases is that of Energinet, the state operator of Denmark’s electricity grid, which, in March, suspended all new large-scale connection agreements by receiving requests that would reach 60 GW, with 14 GW of them being for data centers. As in the case of Aragon, it must be put in context and, according to According to CNBC, the country’s maximum demand is 7 GW, so that total of 60 GW exceeds the country’s consumption almost nine times. It is not about canceling plans, but about an extension until we discuss what to do with that demand, but there are already those who point out that the extension cannot be ruled out because, simply, the country’s network may not be prepared. Estimation of increased energy demand for data centers FLAP-D. But they are not the only ones. Amsterdam, London or Dublin can no longer absorb the brutal energy consumption of artificial intelligence and the technology industry has set his eyes on the northern countries (in which wind energy is the protagonist) and in those in the south (with solar as a guest star). They are three important names because they are part of the FLAP-D, the conglomerate of Flankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin that, historically, have been the dominators of the data center sector. Because these facilities have existed before the arrival of AI, but with the conversion to computing centers for AI is when their consumption has decreased. shot and when these metropolitan areas cannot meet demand. Those needs are so exaggerated It is estimated that data centers accounted for almost 80% of Dublin’s electricity consumption, forcing Ireland to impose a de facto moratorium on new data centers in its capital until 2028. braking. The situation, of course, is not the most promising for those who are building the AI ​​infrastructure at the moment. The boss of SMIC, one of the Chinese companies that is leading the country’s technological transformation, pointed out a few weeks ago that the AI ​​Big Tech companies are building all the infrastructure they will need over the next decade. in just one or two yearswhat is generating that plug in stock components worldwide. But then there is the energy plug which, as we see, is not small. And, obviously, it also generates delays in supply. According to the calculationsa decade to connect the new facilities to the electrical grid. If Microsoft, or whoever, builds a data center by 2027, but can’t pull the plug until 2037, something is clearly wrong. What is clear is that regulators are going to look at these projects with a magnifying glass because there is a physical limit that is that energy and connection requests. In fact, it is already recommended that before coming with a monstrous data center and then looking to see if there is a plug, construction plans take into account consumption and connection planning to national networks from the beginning. But there’s another problem: You can build a data center today that consumes x energy, but when you upgrade to more powerful platforms, those calculations may blow up. Either that… or self-powered data centers, as already stated made in Dublin. In Xataka | Data centers are real “heaters”. And they are settling in regions as hot as Aragón

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