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Facebook's New Data Center To Be Powered Entirely By Renewables

Posted by Soulskill on from the any-way-the-wind-blows dept.

totalcaos writes: Facebook's new $500 million data center in Forth Worth will be powered entirely by renewable energy, thanks to a 200-megawatt wind project nearby. The data center will come online next year, and the company further plans to power the rest of its data centers with at least 50% renewables by the end of 2018. It's long-term goal is 100%. They claim the carbon impact of one person's yearly Facebook use is roughly the same as the impact of one medium latte.

2 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Energy Storage? by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I RTFA but they didn't mention any energy storage component. What do they do when the wind isn't ideal?

    You create wind using accounting tricks.

  2. Power purchase preference or hard limit? by swb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Is this one of those things where they site near a wind farm and tick a box on a form that says they want to buy green power but in reality the actual electrons that enter the data center are "from the grid" and not actually exclusively produced from renewable sources?

    It would be more impressive if the data center was completely powered by renewables ONLY and unable to tap into the non-renewable sources of the grid. Basically, make it an off grid only data center. But I imagine that this would be much harder and more expensive than simply checking a box and producing a spreadsheet that says you use renewable sources when in fact you're probably using baseline power from non-renewable sources.