14
GREENING THE DATA CENTRE
SICS Swedish ICT, in partnership with the Luleå
University of Technology has started building the first
phase of a national large-scale data centre facility
for testing and experimentation around big data and
cloud technologies.
the whole community pulled together to create a
compelling opportunity for the internet giant.
In 2010, Mayor Karl Petersen and the CEO of the
Luleå Business Agency Matz Engman visited Facebook
in California to brief them on the attractions of the
region. The selection process spanned 18 months
encompassing extensive evaluations including other
Nordic sites before The Node Pole was determined
as having the best combination of attributes and
selected.
Mayor Petersen, who has written a book - Hello
Mr Mayor, this is Facebook calling – chronicling
the investment, said at the time: “Facebook’s data
center in Luleå marks the beginning of a new era,
as we are now entering a digital industrial age.
Facebook required a certificate verifying that the
energy consumed by the facility would come from
renewable resources. Thanks to the Lule River, we
could guarantee this. In fact, the Lule River generates
nine per cent of all Swedish electricity through
hydropower”.
Colocation with Hydro66
Motivated by an ambition to offer green, low cost
colocation services to all companies, not just the
internet giants, Hydro66 carried out a site selection
exercise in 2014 with a view to embarking on an
initial specialist hardware deployment. From here we
produced detailed plans to create a dedicated ultraefficient, green data centre facility.
The Norrbotten region of Sweden is a particularly
attractive one to energy intensive industries.
Until the 1980s the Lule River was notable for the
transportation of timber from the forests to the main
city of Luleå. Today the big draw is its renewable
hydroelectric generation.
The scale is impressive with sixteen hydroelectric
power stations producing 4,300 MW of electricity.
The largest situated at Harsprånget generates 977
MW, the largest hydro station in Sweden, the third
largest in the Nordics. To help with context, this power
station could supply all the colocation data centres in
London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Paris…
Data centres depend on low costs and a reliable,
plentiful source of power. Coupling all of this with
the cold location produces cost savings avoiding
expensive compressor based air conditioning which
creates a high capital cost and an increased overhead
to the overall power consumption of a server farm by
as much as 50 per cent.
The construction of a new 120MVA substation
fed by four diverse regional grids was a substantial
factor in locating in Boden. Using power from diverse
generating stations and distributing it throughout
the data centre increases reliability; using power close
to its generation cuts out transmission losses and
wasted power.
The Node Pole
Facebook is not the only company to acknowledge
the regions suitability for high power hosting. Four
local municipalities combined into a marketing
and business support organisation, The Node Pole,
to attract investment. The largest is a specialist
digital currency company, KnCMiner. In 2015 KnC
announced two expansions of its existing data
centres in Boden, Sweden. Increasing from 30MW
to 70MW they more than doubled the power
consumption of the town representing an expansion
close to double that of new colocation service take up
in London in a typical year.
At the same time there is a focus on academic
developments for data centre and cloud research.
The Arctic gold rush
Ten years ago the cost of connectivity meant that
locating data centres in regions with abundant power
generation was not always economically viable. As
fibre prices continue to fall and power costs increase,
it is more cost effective to ship photons rather than
electrons.
Additionally, the Click Clean report from
Greenpeace has spurred companies into becoming
more environmentally responsible when selecting
hos