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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.

9 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. Facebook use and lattes by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 5, Funny

    They claim the carbon impact of one person's yearly Facebook use is roughly the same as the impact of one medium latte.

    Great. We've moved into a whole new era of hipster-friendly casual units of measurement.

    Henceforth, length of text will no longer be measured in Libraries of Congress, but in multiples of either Gravity's Rainbow or Atlas Shrugged.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  2. Energy Storage? by AgentElrond · · Score: 2

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

    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. Re:Energy Storage? by Virtucon · · Score: 2

      This is in North Texas, there's always wind.

      --
      Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
    3. Re:Energy Storage? by beelsebob · · Score: 2

      Again - the point of the government is to manage society working together. You are effectively saying "I don't want to be part of a society or attempt to contribute anything to it".

      The reason the government is regulating it is because simple capitalist free markets will not get the ball rolling on what everyone can plainly see is a social good.

      Again - if you don't want to lose out - start investing in the things that society has determined are good for the country as a whole. Simple.

  3. 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.

    1. Re:Power purchase preference or hard limit? by OzPeter · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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?

      Whats worse is that after you buy those electrons from the power companies and use them in your process, you give them back for free. Imagine the overall cost savings you could have if someone developed a market for used electrons and you could sell what you didn't need. I bet that its those power companies that are suppressing that idea so that they can hold on to all those $$$.

      But to answer your question. If the Green power company pours X amount of electrons into the grid, and the FB pays that company $$ to pull X electrons from the grid and uses them to power their data center, then what is the problem if they also mix with electrons from other sources? What you are proposing (dedicated onsite, pure green power stations for each enterprise) would be cost prohibitive and stupid for a number of reasons - such as not utilizing scales of economy in the power generation, having to colocate the data centers at the site of the renewable generation, and finally having zero redundancy in their power supplies.

      --
      I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
    2. Re:Power purchase preference or hard limit? by swb · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What I'm proposing is a little more honesty in PR.

      I think the basic technical fact is that this data center won't be "exclusively renewable" except on paper. The reality is that it will rely on non-renewable baseline power.

      So it seems kind of dishonest to say it's a "renewable only" datacenter.

    3. Re:Power purchase preference or hard limit? by dave420 · · Score: 3, Informative

      No, you are arguing for a level of pedantry sufficient to make the precise point you want to make. Arrangements like this are "exclusively renewable" as the agreed amounts of renewable energy put in to the "pot" and taken out of it are the same. That's it. That's how it works, how it has worked in the past in non-renewable power production, and how it will continue to work in the future. If your pedantry clouds your rational mind, you might want to consider giving one up for the sake of the other... The choice of which is yours, naturally.