Facebook’s newest data center in Forth Worth, Texas, announced last July under the Project Ernst moniker, is well under way with construction costs passing $200 million, according to BuildZoom.
The plan is to use 100% renewable energy derived from a nearby wind power installation to power the data center, which Business Insider says will reach a final price tag of $500 million.
Jack Cookson of BuildZoom has tracked the building permits associated with the construction.
“The project has cost $229,719,000 to date, and that’s just the beginning,” Cookson noted. “So far, the bulk of the project is captured in eight general construction building permits. These were obtained in a joint venture by California’s DPR Construction and Oregon’s Fortis Construction. The 17 plumbing and eight mechanical permits were obtained by local Texan contractors TDIndustries and Powers Plumbing, while Rosendin Electric of California obtained all seven electrical permits.”
The $229.7 million figure was good up until Feb. 16. Cookson told RCR Wireless News that on Feb. 26 a permit valued at $108 million was granted to “finish out data hall and associated mechanical spaces.”
When the project was announced last year, Tom Furlong, VP of site operations at Facebook, wrote in a blog post that the facility will “be one of the most advanced, efficient and sustainable data centers in the world. Our continuing work on data center design is an important part of our overall infrastructure efficiency efforts, which have helped us save more than $2 billion in infrastructure costs over the last three years. … Fort Worth will be powered by 100% renewable energy, thanks to the 200 MW of new wind energy we helped bring to the Texas grid as part of this deal. Thanks to our continued focus on efficiency and our investments in renewables in recent years, the carbon impact of one person’s use of Facebook for an entire year is the same as the carbon impact of a medium latte.”
In 2011, Facebook started the nonprofit Open Compute Project, which is a forum for data center players to share technical specifications to drive efficiency, power savings and other key metrics in the space. Since its inception, Open Compute Project has drawn high-profile collaborators including Intel, Microsoft, Verizon, AT&T and, as of this week, Google.
