Hanwha Ocean and ABB Agree to Develop Power Systems for Floating AI Data Centres

The deal is a bet that some AI computing can move offshore. Land-based data centres are running into shortages of sites and grid connections, and a floating facility that carries its own generators and uses seawater for cooling sidesteps both problems, at least on paper. Hanwha Ocean is trying to turn its experience building offshore oil and gas platforms into a business in digital infrastructure, and it needs a power specialist to make the electrical side credible to data centre customers.

Under the agreement, Hanwha Ocean will handle the basic design and power system configuration of the floating data centre, set design standards for power generation built around liquefied natural gas engines, and lay out equipment for the marine environment, according to reports in Seoul Economic Daily and BusinessKorea. ABB will analyse the reliability and power quality of that system based on Hanwha's designs and carry out technical reviews aimed at keeping supply stable and operations efficient.

The most technically demanding piece is joint work on integrated control software that adjusts LNG engine output in real time. AI training and inference workloads can cause large and sudden changes in electricity draw, which is difficult to manage for an isolated plant with no grid to lean on.

Heo Yoon, executive vice president and head of Hanwha Ocean's Product Strategy and Technology Institute, said technologies that support stable power supply and efficient operation of data centres "are becoming more important", according to Seoul Economic Daily, which noted that the remarks were translated from Korean. He said the company would raise the technical maturity of floating data centre designs suited to marine conditions. Masayasu Ishikawa, head of ABB's Asia-Pacific distribution solutions division, attended the signing.

Hanwha Ocean first showed its in-house floating data centre model at the Gastech 2026 conference in Bangkok in September. That design has a capacity of 60 megawatts, is modular so customers can choose how power is generated and supplied, and has received approval in principle from the American Bureau of Shipping, according to defence trade site Defensehere.

The companies did not disclose financial terms, a customer, or a timetable for building a first vessel. The two already work together in conventional shipbuilding: ABB supplies equipment for a floating LNG terminal Hanwha Ocean is building for Singapore.

The next milestone set out in the agreement is the completion of the joint technical review and control-system work by May 2027, after which Hanwha Ocean will need to show a buyer is willing to commission a data centre at sea.