Facebook to Build Yet Another Massive New Data Center
By Matthew Wheeland Published November 12, 2010
It’s been a busy year for Facebook’s expansion into the data center world. First was the January announcement that it was opening a green data center in Prineville, Ore. Then came the news in August that it was already planning to double the size of that facility. And now comes the news that the company is investing nearly half a billion dollars in another new data center in North Carolina.
The company’s Rutherford County data center will cost $450 million to build over the next 18 months, and will boast plenty of the green technologies that Facebook has been touting of late.
Details about the data center are scarce to nonexistent, except for the cost, and a handful of pictures posted to the data center’s Facebook page. But, based on the location, it’s possible to infer two things:
1) Outside-air cooling will not be quite as easy as in Oregon, and
2) The power mix for North Carolina makes it likely that it will draw electricity from coal-fired plants.The seasonal weather averages for Forest City, N.C., and Prineville, Ore., at right (click image for full-sized), show warmer low temperatures and a slightly longer hot-weather curve in the summer. Although the winters in North Carolina are plenty cool, summers are much hotter than in Oregon — “brutal,” according to Cade Metz in The Register.
As to point number two: You may recall a little ongoing dustup between Facebook and Greenpeace over Facebook’s use of coal-fired power to run its Prineville data center. Well, according to the federal Energy Information Administration, where Oregon is dominated by hydroelectric power and coal-fired electricity is largely imported, North Carolina is coal country, with about 60 percent of its energy coming from coal, about 30 percent coming from nuclear power.
November 13, 2010
Facebook to build another massive new data center
Posted by ddeighton under Built Environment, Energy Demand, Energy Supply, LZC Technologies, Resource Intensity | Tags: CO2 Reduction, Energy Performance, green technology |Leave a Comment
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