From Outdated to Outstanding: Facebook's Oregon Data Center Earns LEED Gold

Facebook’s (News - Alert) data center in Prineville, Oregon, has emerged from an “extreme makeover” with inner and outer attributes that even the most zealous environmentalists would love (or “friend”).

Today, the social network’sproperty in Prineville uses 52 percent less energy to operate than a comparable facility built to code requirements—and it has been recognized with LEED Gold Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

What a difference a year can make: In 2010, when Palo Alto (News - Alert), California-based Facebook selected the site, eco-advocates such as Greenpeace International protested because the power utility company contracted for the center, PacifiCorp, generated 70 percent of its electricity from coal.

But, now that the complex has been completed renovated and retrofitted—“from grid to gate,” according to Facebook’s blog—a solar energy array is generating an estimated 204,000 kilowatt hours per year, providing electricity to the office areas. In addition, the offices are warmed by reuse of heat created by the servers.

Innovation was key to achieving the company’s efficiency goals. “We are proud to have pioneered several new technologies in the design and operation here, including new energy-efficient server designs and a low-energy evaporative cooling system that makes use of the low-humidity climate of central Oregon’s high-desert setting to eliminate traditional air conditioners. Overall, the data center uses 38 percent less energy to do the same work than Facebook's existing leased facilities,” the search giant comments.

 Among the leading-edge installations that contribute to the data center’s energy efficiency are:

• One hundred percent outside air evaporative cooling ,which requires no cooling towers or chillers: While conventional data centers require energy intensive cooling towers or chillers to maintain the right temperatures for servers; the Prineville facility uses a highly sophisticated, low-energy design that draws cool outside air from the atmosphere into the building, which then is additionally cooled through evaporation.
• Custom serversthatuse less 38 percent less energy and can operate at higher temperatures to reduce mechanical cooling needs.
• Novel electrical distribution from an on-site substation, which eliminates unnecessary losses from transformations and conversions: The process for delivering power from the on-site substation has been simplified, resulting in fewer conversions of power between the substation and the data center, which in turn reduces the amount of energy lost. Conventional data center energy loss during conversion runs at 21 percent to 27 percent; at Prineville data center the loss is only 7.5 percent.

The idea for this new electrical distribution design came from Jay Park, Facebook’s director of Data Center Design Engineering. He thought of the new approach in the middle of the night and, with no paper available, sketched it out on a napkin. A photo of the napkin is now framed and hanging in the Prineville facility. The location of the data center in Prineville, which enjoys relatively cool temperatures year-round, also supports economical chilling.

In addition to its energy efficiencies, the Prineville data center offers many other environmental conservation features, among them:

• Twenty-seven percent of building materials used came from recycled products,
• Thirty percent of materials used were locally sourced and manufactured,
• Ninety-one percent of the wood used was FSC-certified from sustainability-managed forests, and
• Eighty-three percent of construction waste was recycled or reused—preventing 530 tons of waste from ending up in a landfill.

At the completed facility, 100 percent of rainwater is captured and reused for all irrigation and toilet-flushing needs, a savings of 272,000 gallons of municipally treated water per year.

Facebook also incorporated an energy management system for the facility, with the assistance of Fremont, California-based Redwood Systems— an LED control system that uses Ethernet cables to manage network lights and turns off most lights when no one is around. The system currently controls more than 1,000 lights and Facebook plans to add the lighting system to the rest of the buildings at the Oregon data center shortly. What’s more, Facebook may implement the same technology in its newest data center in North Carolina.