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(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Becoming the first known site of its kind in the US, Illinois lSP and hosting provider Other World Computing (www.owc.net) is powering its data center entirely using on-site wind turbines.
According to a report from Data Center Knowledge, OWC started using a 131-foot tall wind turbine in October to power all of its operations in Woodstock, Illinois, which include the company's headquarters and a small data center to support its web hosting and ISP services.
"I made the decision to 100 percent self fund this project because of the conservational benefits as well as the future cost of energy," Other World Computing chief executive officer Larry O'Connor said in as statement. "With the kilowatt hour rate in the Chicago market up 24.3 percent since 1999, it only makes sense to use technology to lower our usage and costs related to traditional power sources."
Other operations have embraced wind power working with partners in different ways to incorporate renewable energy without directly generating their own. Green House Data's (www.greenhousedata.com) 10,000-square-foot data center in Cheyenne, Wyoming, is powered entirely using wind energy bought from its local utility, and Microsoft's (www.microsoft.com) Virtual Earth service is powered by its Boulder, Colorado, data center that uses wind power offsets purchased from Renewable Choice Energy (www.renewablechoice.com).
By using on-site wind power, however, OWC sets itself apart as perhaps the working data center with enough on-site wind generation to support its entire facility. OWC's small size and efficient infrastructure only required one turbine, making one wonder if on-site wind power is feasible for larger projects.
A 28,000-square-foot facility in Stratford, Texas, will be a testing ground for large-scale on-site wind powered data centers. Texas startup Baryonyx (www.baryonyxcorp.com) is planing to power its Stratford facility using 100 wind turbines built on adjacent land, which will generate as much as 150 megawatts of energy.
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Technically, there's nothing new about us posing the question, "what are the next steps hosting providers must take to capitalize on the opportunities available in the business?" From the 10,000-foot view, that's the basic premise that underlies just about everything the WHIR publishes or produces. In this particular case, however, we're looking at it through an extremely significant contextual lens. That is, for much of the last two years, hosting providers have been operating in a business climate defined by an economy in crisis.
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