Facebook Building A Server Farm At The Edge Of The Arctic Circle

Facebook is preparing to build a farm facility in Luleå, northern Sweden. This is the first time that Facebook is building a server farm outside of the U.S. “The climate will allow them to just use only air for cooling the servers,” stated Aurorum Science Park CEO Mats Engman. Aurorum is on a mission to convince other large computing companies. “If you take the statistics, the temperature has not been above 30C [86F] for more than 24 hours since 1961. If you take the average temperature, it’s around 2C [35.6F].”

Luleå is at the northern tip of the Baltic sea, which is 62 miles South of the Arctic Circle. Facebook plans to build three giant server halls that covers the size of 11 football fields. Keeping the servers running will require 120MW of power, which is enough to supply 16,000 detached homes.

Facebook’s Director of Site Operations Tom Furlong is flying to Luleå to give a full outline of their data center plans before making a public announcement. In Sweden, Furlong looked at 40 different sites alone before deciding to go with Luleå and Östersund. Furlong led the development of Facebook’s first server farm in Prineville, Oregon.

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