Facebook’s new data center will run on 100% wind-energy

Facebook has announced that it’ll build a massive data center in Fort Worth, Texas. All electricity requirements of the data center will be met by 200 MW of wind energy. For cooling, no air conditioners will be used, rather, outdoor air will do the cooling job.

Facebook’s three data center buildings, each 250,000-square-foot, are under construction on a 111-acre site. The center will start operating in 2016.

That’s a big leap towards cutting grid electricity consumption and emissions, especially when the number of data centers is rising rapidly in U.S. There are over three million data centers in the country, which means one center per 100 people.

The energy consumption by data centers has risen to 100 billion kilowatt-hours in 2013 from 30 billion in 2001.

Ken Patchett, director of Facebook’s data center operations, expects that the data center would help in boosting the Facebook’s growing global infrastructure in eco-freindly way.

Other giants like Google and Microsoft have already invested in large green projects and are striving to cut their carbon footprint as much as they can. Sustainable architecture and renewable energy are becoming focus in infrastructural extension.

Via: Mashable