Facebook Reveals Wind-Powered Texas Data Centre

Facebook’s fifth data centre will be be powered by 100 percent renewable energy and be built in Forth Worth, Texas, providing much needed extra computing power for the social network and its 1.4 billion global users.

The 500,000 square foot build will be run by wind power and solar power, and is Facebook’s fourth in the US, alongside Oregon, North Carolina and Iowa.

Advanced

“Like its predecessors, we expect Fort Worth to be one of the most advanced, efficient, and sustainable data centres in the world,” said Tom Furlong, vice president of infrastructure at Facebook. “Our continuing work on data centre design is an important part of our overall infrastructure efficiency efforts, which have helped us save more than $2 billion in infrastructure costs over the last three years.”

The data centre’s 200 MW of wind energy will come off the local Texas grid in an initiative spearheaded by Facebook itself, with the company claiming the build represents its continued focus on efficiency and investments into renewables.

To that end, Furlong said that the carbon impact of one person’s use of Facebook for a year is the same as the carbon impact of a medium latte. However, the specific coffee vendor was not named.

The data centre’s designs will also be openly shared through the Open Compute Project, a project that houses more than 200 members that collaborate to advance data centre technologies.

Ireland

Facebook is also planning a data centre in Ireland, a build which would be its second in Europe.

According to a planning application filed in County Meath, the data centre would use renewable energy sources and support a ‘large pool’ of local talent.

Ireland is home to Facebook’s European headquarters, and a planning application for the County Meath data centre was filed in June.

The Irish minister for jobs, enterprise and innovation, Richard Bruton, who has been speaking with Facebook, said: “We have specifically targeted data centres as part of our Action Plan for jobs – this is an area particularly well suited to our climate and infrastructure, and holds the capacity to bring much-needed jobs and investment to regions where jobs are not growing as quickly.”

Take our cloud computing quiz here!