A small ISP (Internet Service Provider) and hosting company in Illinois has become the first data center operator to be powered entirely by wind energy. The company is called Other World Computing (OWC) and is located in Woodstock, Illinois. It has installed a wind turbine on its premises, that supplies all of its energy needs.
The turbine is 131 foot high and it can generate 500 kilowatts of power. Per year, it generates 1.2 million kW, more than twice what OWC needs. The surplus power will be sold to the local power provider. When the wind blows stronger, the wind turbine can produce in one week more energy than what OWC needs for a whole month. On the other hand, the company knows that the wind may not always blow; in those cases, energy is taken from the local provider.
When wind power is transformed into energy, the energy goes to the company’s metering device; OWC uses the amount it needs, and the rest is sold to the local provider.
Further, the company’s facility was rated LEED Platinum. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a rating system that provides a set of standards for environmental construction. Also, thanks to its different green initiatives, OWC was ranked N 9 on a list of green-IT vendors, by computerworld, in 2008.
The turbine was designed to function and produce energy at low speeds, given that the area’s average wind speed is of 10-15 mph. Even at 9 mph, the turbine can generate power.
The whole installation of the turbine cost $1.25 million, an investment that OWC expects to recover within 10-14 years. This period can be reduced considering the rising energy costs.
VIA: DataCenterKnowledge
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