On the collaborative salvaging of Operation Tulipš· ā a Digital Delta Plan of critical national importance for The Netherlands š³š±
Last week, the wreckage of āThe Enduranceā ā the lost ship of Anglo-Irish explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton ā was located on the bottom of Antarctica's Weddell sea, after having been lost for more than a century. The vessel, which had originally set sail from Buenos Aires around the time of World War I, was found in a remarkably well preserved state on 5th of March 2022 ā exactly 100 years to the day of its captainās funeral ā„.
Percy Blackborow, an 18 year-old boy who was deemed too inexperienced to join the mission, became a stowaway to be with his American friend; both were amongst the crew of 28 men who were all eventually rescued through the heroic, collaborative efforts of their crewmates.
Operation Tulip strandedāwaiting for a new national strategy for data centers
Back in modern times, another vessel has recently become ice-bound. Sailing under the flag of āOperation Tulipā, Facebook (now Meta) executives aspired to construct the largest data center in the history of The Netherlands, at a site near Zeewolde ā a small town in the center of The Netherlands, within spitting distance of the Amsterdam internet hub. Although originally approved by the local city council (11 in favor, 8 against), the project is currently on hold pending resolution of opposing forces in Dutch society, through the definition of āa new national strategy for data centersā.
Operation Tulip was originally launched in 2018, and was reportedly conducted in secret. One can only imagine what goes on in the mind of a hyper-scaler, but presumably the company feared exactly the type of public backlash we are witnessing today. Details are hard to come by, but some public documents (in Dutch) may shed some light on the situation.
Xenophobia ā the fear of the unknown
Humans have evolved to naturally fear what is unknown. In spite of epic efforts by some in the industry, thousands of years of evolution have wired us to run away from big, shady, fast moving objects. Our brains have separate speedy pathways to quickly process and assess the situation ā improving our chance at survival as a species. Unfortunately, the same kneejerk response affects our assessment of data center technology.
For sure, a company named āGreater Kudu LLCā does not inspire trust. Likewise, given that tulip mania is the first known example of an economic crisis, a name like āOperation Tulipā does not fare much better.
A Digital Data Delta Plan ā a project of national importance
The concept of a āDigital Delta Planā has recently been used in a more generic context (in Dutch). The term originates from a big watershed moment in Dutch history, a major flood at the beginning of February 1953 that caused tragic loss of life and vast economic damages.
Interestingly, the southern part of Flevoland where the data center is being planned became dry land back in 1968, as a consequence of the physical Delta Plan. The current developments can therefore be considered as directly related. The Dutch āpolder modelā is a famous method of consensus decision-making.
The time to involve Dutch engineers is now š
Next week there will be local municipality elections in The Netherlands, in which the composition of local city councils gets decided. Not only Zeewolde has pending elections, there are other examples like Wieringermeer (location of a similar Microsoft data center).
Local politicians prefer to pretend there is nothing to see here: āAfter all, the decision came exactly between two municipal elections. So the citizens didnāt have to vote on it. āThatās how it sometimes went with asylum seekersā centres.ā
āAn upgrade station to get the residual heat to a usable temperature and a heat network cost tens of millions of eurosā
Meanwhile, at a showcase project in Odense(Denmark), Facebook (Meta) is demonstrating its heat reuse capabilities and āis keen to use the heat recovery system in other locationsā. It has announced plans to extend the facility.
Instead of copying a design from Ohio, why not copy the Odense design? Except instead of air cooling, use direct liquid cooling(DLC) for the servers such that the produced heat is higher quality, and does not require āan upgrade station that costs tens of millions of euros, at the expense of residentsā. The example referenced below is a pilot project by Dutch firm Switch Datacenters in Amsterdam, supported by servers from Dutch startup iXora BV which can provide water for heat reuse at temperatures of 40 to 60Ā°C (86ā104Ā°F).
These Dutch Open Compute Platform(OCP) servers could be an example of recurring (sustainable) local content ā a concept known from the oil & gas industry, where governments put specific requirements for inclusion of local value creation as part of project contracts.
The Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance (SDIA) has just released its vision document to build a better cloud infrastructure for Europe (pdf). It includes a reference to a Danish study on hyper-scale heat reuse(2018)
A rescue mission
The time for action is now. The Netherlands needs data center infrastructure, and to get there it needs to facilitate the required international investments and organize the necessary polder model discussions to make things happen.
Letās talk!
