As the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has observed, data centers are one of the largest and fastest growing consumers of electricity in the United States. With the explosion of digital content, Big Data, e-Commerce and Internet traffic, data center electricity consumption is projected to increase to roughly 140 billion kilowatt-hours annually by 2020 — the equivalent annual output of 50 power plants emitting nearly 100 million metric tons of carbon pollution per year.
Within this troubling ecosphere, however, two progressive providers have partnered to initiate an energy efficient and environmentally responsible solution for their customers.
Server Farm Realty, LLC (SFR), one of the nation’s most innovative, privately-owned data center developers, has just inked an agreement to lease its highly reliable, state-of-the-art data center facility in Moses Lake, E. Washington to CenturyLink, Inc., a global communications, hosting, cloud and IT services company. The move allows CenturyLink to add hydro-electric-powered data center services to its hybrid IT services portfolio, and extend the reach of its data center footprint while adhering to its requirement of energy efficiency and commitment to environmental sustainability.
The electricity for Server Farm Realty’s Moses Lake data center is in part supplied by hydro-electric generators powered by the nearby Columbia River. This allows the facility to cost-effectively support up to 30MW of IT load on the site, with an initial ramp to 8MW. Moreover, the unique climate of central Washington enables significant use of free-air cooling, driving some of the lowest power usage effectiveness (PUE) figures in the data center industry.
Server Farm Realty’s Titan data center site also has a seismic rating of 2B, the lowest rating in the Western United States. Hence, while global enterprises will benefit from low power costs by virtue of the renewable energy source, the facility’s high resiliency and geographic location make it ideal for cloud and disaster recovery solutions.
As CenturyLink continues to meet the growing demand from its enterprise customers to access cloud, colocation and managed services, Server Farm Realty’s Moses Lake Titan data center becomes a key component in the company’s energy conservation and sustainability strategy, while delivering the resiliency, redundancy and reliability that enterprises have come to expect.
Server Farm Realty’s data centers span the U.S. and Canada. In addition to Moses Lake, E. Washington, Server Farm Realty has major facilities in key markets such as Santa Clara, California, Chicago, Illinois, Toronto, Ontario, and Charlotte, North Carolina.
For more information about Server Farm Realty, visit www.serverfarmrealty.com.