Facebook is building a big wind power data center in Texas

The data center will use wind power from a large wind farm that is also under construction on 17,000 acres of land in Clay County about 90 miles from the data center. By agreeing to buy the power from the 200-megawatt wind farm, Facebook helped bring the clean power project onto the grid. Facebook says the data center will be 100% powered by clean energy.

Facebook is building a massive data center in Texas to provide more computing capacity for the online social network’s 1.4 billion users to share tidbits of their lives with friends and family.

 

The building in Fort Worth, Texas will span about 500,000 square feet. It will be located on a 111-acre site that will allow for further expansion.

Facebook Inc. initially expects to employ 40 people at the data center, which will rely solely on wind power to keep its computer servers running.

It will be Facebook’s fourth data center in the U.S., joining others in Oregon, Iowa and North Carolina. The Menlo Park, California, company’s only overseas data center is in Sweden.

Rival Google Inc. recently picked Alabama to be the home of its 14th data center.