On the eve of the official opening of Yahoo’s first ultra-efficient chicken-coop inspired green data center, Yahoo’s VP of Data Center Engineering & Operations Scott Noteboom told me Yahoo also had other Coop data centers under construction in undisclosed locations. Well, here’s the location of Yahoo’s second coop data center: Switzerland (hat tip Data Center Knowledge).
Yahoo says it will build another green data center in Avenches, Switzerland, which will come online in 2012. But instead of building the coop design from scratch — like at Yahoo’s Lockport, New York location — Yahoo will be converting an existing facility into the open air-cooled structure that has generated so much attention stateside.
Yahoo’s Lockport facility is cooled almost 100 percent by outside air (in contrast to the large power-hungry chillers that cool most data centers), and uses 40 percent less energy than typical data centers. While cooling can traditionally suck up a good half of the energy consumption of a data center, Yahoo’s Coop design attributes just 1 percent of its annual energy consumption to cooling.
In an interview with me in July Noteboom compared the design innovation of the Coop to a technology disruption as large as Henry Ford’s automation of the auto factory. Yahoo can get a lower cost to build and run a Coop; it’s more energy-efficient; and it’s more simple and quicker to build than traditional data centers, said Noteboom.
Outside air cooling only works in certain locations (need cool winds) and the Lockport data center utilizes the winds coming off of the nearby lakes. The Swiss region likely offers a similar cooling environment, and Yahoo says the Swiss data center will have a Power Usage Effectiveness metric (or PUE) of 1.08, the same as the Lockport facility. PUE measures the energy efficiency of data centers, and a PUE of 1 is excellent, while a PUE of 2 is not so good.
These green data centers can cost around $150 million or so to build, but can save significant energy savings over the life of the facility. Greener data centers will play an increasingly important role for Internet companies. According to the DOE, data centers are responsible for 3 percent of U.S. energy consumption, and growing, and a typical 125,000 foot data center consumes $3 million worth of energy per year. With more data centers being built to support our always-on culture, companies will continue to look to ways to cut that energy bill.
For more research on green data centers check out GigaOM Pro (subscription required):
The Real Reason Google Is Buying Wind Power

Comments have been disabled for this post