Sun to Create Underground Japanese Datacenter

Kurtz'sKompund writes with word of a Sun project in Japan, one that's taking a somewhat non-standard approach to data center construction. To save on power, heating, and water costs, the consortium is going to be building their center in an abandoned coal mine. The outpost will be created by lowering Blackbox systems into the ground; estimates on savings run to $9 million annually in electricity alone.

Thermal fun

[Sarten-X]

This could be an interesting use of the Earth's tendency to be a thermal sink. Caves are always about 55 F, as I recall. Maybe they can use this to their advantage.

Re:Thermal fun

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole freaking point is that caves are well insulated. As the GP says, caves aren't cooled (or heated), they're just insulated from surface temps.

Re:Thermal fun

[BosstonesOwn]

Does not the air conditioning cycle in these black boxes also remove humidity ? I worked at Sun and got to play with these containers. They remove the humidity from in coming air and are cooled with water.

It seems like the idea is to use the mines water to cool the containers and dump it back into the mine to be cooled and reused. They also have dehumidifiers built into the Black box to prevent condensating moisture inside.

I worked on wiring one with a couple cohorts and even sweating in these things is a joke , it's pretty much sucked up in about 5 minutes of being sediment in the box.