GREENING THE DATA CENTRE
Hydro powered data...
When in 2011 Facebook announced their first data
centre outside of North America, few expected it to
be located in the north of Sweden. Since then and no
doubt partly inspired by the 100 per cent renewable
power and cold climate, there has been a strong
increase in tech companies arriving in the region.
However, smaller organisations don’t have a
Facebook size budget, but essentially they have a
comparable if not smaller need. Inspired by this,
we embarked on a mission to enable Facebook
economics for everyone and opened the first purpose
built colocation centre in the region in October 2015.
Our name is no accident: Hydro is derived from
hydroelectric renewable power and 66 signifies the
Arctic Circle location, 66 degrees north of the equator.
Our foundation is based on providing environmentally
responsible, money saving hosting to companies that
either don’t want to or can’t build their own facility.
Walk the talk and make it happen
Facebook decides
The trailblazer for arctic data centres was Facebook.
Having considered multiple European locations they
settled on the north of Sweden because of the cold
climate, the abundant green power and the local
skills.
Their facility is one of the most efficient and
sustainable data centres in the world. It is powered
by locally generated hydroelectric energy which is not
only 100 per cent renewable, but highly reliable. In
fact, it is so reliable that we could reduce the number
of backup generators required at the site by more
than 70 per cent. The region has not seen a grid
outage since the 1970’.
Facebook calling
An important factor in the site selection process
for Facebook was enthusiastic support from local
politicians and a determination to ensure that
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