Green Mountain Data Center is Buried Underground and Cooled By Norway’s Fjords

Buried deep underneath the mountains near Stavanger, Norway, the <a href="http://www.greenmountain.no/" target="_blank">Green Mountain Data Center</a> is quite possibly the greenest data center in the world. Powered by renewable energy from nearby sources and cooled with water from the adjacent fjord, the cavernous data center is all about energy efficiency. The center dramatically reduces its cooling costs and energy use by tapping into the 8 degree Celsius water from the fjord.

<a href="http://www.greenmountain.no/" target="_blank">Green Mountain Data Center</a> has about 21,000 sq meter of floor space inside the mountain.

This includes facilities for administration, warehousing, a quay, and 9 halls to house data servers.

As servers pump out of a lot of heat while storing and processing digital data, a powerful cooling system is needed to keep them from overheating.

A number of data centers around the world are working towards more energy efficient systems, but the Green Mountain Data Center may have hit upon a jackpot.

First, the center is buried underground, which means it uses the earth and the surrounding rock as a moderator.

Then it uses water from the neighboring fjord in a closed loop ground water heat exchanger, the cold, 8 degree C (46 deg F) efficiently cools the underground space.

The center also sources all of its power from a number of very close renewable energy providers, which makes the center totally carbon neutral.

Combined with energy efficient design inside, the center is promoting itself as an environmentally friendly server farm.

With a variety of close power sources nearby with a high level of redundancy, the farm is also promising a <a href="http://www.greenmountain.no/index.php?cmd=POWERSUPPLY" target="_blank">99.9997% availability</a>.

The entrance of the center is partially obscured by a green wall.

Most of the data center's business will come locally from Norway, but they may also attract clients from Europe and the US because of their eco-friendly offerings.

Development of the mountain halls and server rooms is going on now and they expect to be up and <a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/12/20/norways-fjord-cooled-data-center/" target="_blank">running sometime late 2012</a>.

One of the main entrances into the data center carved into rock.