14 DAY TRIAL // In a couple of years, Facebook will cut the ribbon on a brand-new and possibly very shinny data center in Iowa. As part of its commitment to keep its ecological footprint to a minimum, the company has made sure that the facility will be powered by green energy alone.
Specifically, Facebook says that this new data center will have its electricity demands met by a wind farm that is currently being built close to Wellsburg, Iowa.
Local utility MidAmerican Energy is the one in charge of implementing this green energy project, and will also be the wind farm's owner and operator once the facility goes online.
“We first started working on this project with RPM Access, a local wind project developer, as we were finalizing our decision to locate in Iowa. Earlier this spring, we transferred our rights to the development to MidAmerican Energy, our local utility, to build, own, and operate it,” Facebook explains.
In a blog post, the company details that, should things go as planned, the wind farm will become operational sometime next year. The data center, on the other hand, is expected to open in 2015.
The 138 MW wind farm will not directly provide electricity to the center. On the contrary, it will feed it into the local grid, to which the data center will be connected.
“Construction is under way, and once it’s completed in 2014, the project will add up to 138 MW of new renewable wind capacity to the grid in Iowa – more than what our data center is likely to require for the foreseeable future,” Facebook says.
Apart from being powered by wind power, the company's Iowa data center will also be extremely energy efficient. Otherwise put, it will use as little energy as possible in order to keep up and running.
As Facebook puts it, “We expect that it will join our data centers in Oregon, North Carolina, and Sweden as some of the most advanced, efficient, and sustainable data centers in the world.”