New datacenter of Facebook won't wind

Summary: The wind is not the best choice to direct datacenter.

While there have been very few holders on the last day of wind-power datacenter of Facebook, it is important to deepen a little to overcome hyperbole.

There is no realistic way to directly feed a datacenter with only wind. To match the well meet the demand and availability, it would be necessary to take measures enough to store energy in facilities to smooth the curve of energy supply.

On one smaller scale, to 100 per cent in wind or solar energy installations are based generally use banks of batteries to provide a constant supply of energy, with wind turbine or solar panels maintain charged batteries. While this can be a practical solution for a small building or house outside of the grid, it is unrealistic for a data center.

And new facilities for Facebook will not be dependent on wind energy in any way.

Representation of the appearance of the planned wind farm Facebook

What Facebook has done for its new plant in Iowa is a work with the local electric company that they build a close 138 MW wind farm. Despite the proximity, wind farm will not feed the datacenter; I prefer the datacenter will draw power from the same network that the wind farm will be incorporated. The purpose of Facebook is the datacenter with 100 percent renewable energy; the company will make use of the EPA program of renewable energy certificates, as they have apparently retained rights REC for the wind farm project.

One REC is created for each 1000 kWh created by renewable energy supply. It is these certificates to Facebook used to compensate and measure the energy needs of the new data center. CERs can only be used once and if sold, already does not count as green energy. They provide a series of green attributes to its creators and users.

So although there is a lot of smoke and mirrors for the green energy business, in this case Facebook is making possible more realistic attempt to provide an infrastructure for renewable energy for their data centers.

With more than 20 years of writings published about technology, as well as performances by industry as everything from a developer's database to CTO, David Chernicoff has earned the term "veteran" in the world of technology.