Project Natwick

An exciting experiment is taking place off the Orkney Islands. Known as Project Natwick by Microsoft who launched and named the project, it is designed to test the most energy efficient way to keep computer equipment cool. This data centre is contained inside a 40 foot long cylinder. This data centre contains 854 servers, which are powered by a connection to the renewable energy sources round Orkney including wind, wave and tidal energy sources, a key object of the project. To test the cooling efficiency of the sea on the data centre Project Natwick is scheduled to run for up to five years and if successful will be the forerunner of many clusters of such data centres on the sea bed round the world.