Facebook to build server farm in Arctic

How much cooler can social networking giant Facebook get? Facebook is planning to build a multimillion-dollar server farm on the edge of the Arctic circle to house its computer servers, UK's The Telegraph reported. Such a move will also mark the first time Facebook locates a server farm outside the US. The Telegraph said the facility at Luleå town in northern Sweden - at the northern tip of the Baltic Sea, 62 miles south of the Arctic Circle, once completed, would use as much electricity as a town of 50,000 people. "The climate will allow them to just use only air for cooling the servers," said Mats Engman, chief executive of the Aurorum Science Park. He said the temperature there has not been above 30 degrees Celsius for more than 24 hours since 1961. The average temperature there is around two degrees, he added. Aurorum Science Park is leading the push to turn the city into a "Node Pole" to lure in other international computing giants. Three server halls Facebook plans to build three giant server halls covering an area the size of 11 football fields. The servers will require 120 megawatts of power, the equivalent of 16,000 detached homes. It will cost Facebook some £45 million a year. But these power needs will be met by renewable electricity generated by dams on the nearby Luleå river, The Telegraph reported. "The Luleå river produces twice as much electricity as the Hoover Dam does, so 50 percent is exported from our region. There is a surplus of energy, and we can supply more data centres in this area easily," Engman said. He added Facebook's engineers had also been attracted by the reliability of the local power grid, which has been built to supply the area's thriving iron, steel and paper industries. Another plus is Sweden's dense fiber-optic network, Engman said. "Sweden has the highest penetration in the world of fibre to households, so it is very well connected. You can get very easily through Finland into Eastern Europe and Russia," he said. Microsoft, Google Facebook is the latest to look to Northern Europe for server farms. In 2007, Microsoft said it was in discussions to build a sever farm in Siberia, but the deal never materialized. For its part, Google bought a disused paper mill in 2009 in Hamima in southern Finland, where it has been building a server farm, although it has been attracted more by the availability of cheap hydroelectric power. — TJD, GMA News