(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — There were many high-profile data center builds announced this year, but five data center projects in particular stood out, both in size and financial investment.
In May, Google opened its new $600 million date center in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
First announced in June 2007, the data center is located on a 60-acre site in the Council Bluffs Industrial Foundation’s new business park, across the Missouri River.
The data center, which will receive a property tax break through 2024, will create 200 new jobs.
The company says the facility will potentially expand beyond its 60 acres. Google owns over 1,100 acres nearby the site.
In May, Apple announced plans to build a new 500,000-square-foot data center in Maiden, North Carolina, 30 miles northwest of Charlotte. The facility could potentially cost upwards of $1 billion.
Though the company has not revealed what it intends to use the data center for, rumours began to surface in August that the facility would house Apple’s new cloud-based applications.
Catawba County and the town of Maiden attracted Apple by offering the company $46 million in tax breaks over the next decade if it builds a data center in the region.
In June, i/o Data Centers officially opened its 538,000 square-foot Phoenix ONE data center, which it calls the largest commercially available data center in the United States and the company’s second Arizona-based facility.
The highly reliable and efficient data center incorporates a range of green technologies, including a 4.5 megawatt solar array on its 11-acre roof.
Also demonstrating the popularity of Phoenix as a destination for data center construction, Global Datacenter Trust broke ground on its 160,000 square foot Phoenix NAP facility, which began announcing customers in August, and adding carriers to its meet-me room in December.
In July, Internet Villages International secured almost $1 billion in financing to build its 3 million square foot “data center village” in Annandale, Scotland.
APC by Schneider will help design the data center to be an ecological, modular and scalable facility. The facility will have an abundance of low-cost land and water, four 100 MW diverse power feeds, 100 percent renewable energy and water, and design and build services that offer maximum energy efficiency.
Once completed, the $1.6 billion data center campus, entitled ALBA1, will eventually include more than 3 million square feet of data center space. The data center project could potentially turn Scotland into a hub for sustainable data centers.
In December, Scottish data center operator Lockerbie Data Centres’ proposed $1.5 billion data center near Lockerbie, Scotland was finally approved by Dumfries & Galloway Council.
First announced in March, the energy-efficient data center project was finally granted approval by local planning officials. The buildout could create up to 1,000 construction jobs and cost up to $5.2 billion in investment.
Engineering consultant WYG will help Lockerbie Data Centres begin construction next year. Once completed, the facility will focus on e-commerce, information technology, international digital communications and horticultural research.
