Oregon's Mighty Data Centers

Including an In-Depth Look at FB's Prineville Operation

one of the stacks of computers for Facebook’s data center in Prineville, Oregon

Also an inside look at Google’s data center in The Dalles and a map of 45 data centers in Oregon

why Oregon?

Data centers come to rural Oregon for cheap land, ample water and relatively inexpensive electricity, essential for powering and cooling all those computers. Oregon has a well established power grid. There are state tax incentives, plus additional tax incentives negotiated with cities and counties, a fairly benign climate, and the possibility of a transpacific cable landing on the Oregon coast.

tax incentives, Feb. 22, 2023, Mike Rogoway, Oregonian/Oregonlive

“FB, Amazon, Google and Apple…collectively save more than $150 million a year on their Oregon data centers, (from State tax incentives) and they’ve maximized their savings as small communities compete for them…Cumulatively, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google have saved $650 million in (local) property taxes on their Oregon server farms.”

FB Data Center

FB in Prineville Oregon before addition of newest buildings

The expansion of data centers is due mostly to the generous tax breaks offered by the state. According to a report by The Oregonian June 2020, tax breaks saved the company nearly $74,000,000 in property tax over its first six years in Prineville. The buildings now cover more than 4 million sq ft.

“Oregon’s data center tax breaks are among the biggest in the nation”

DataCenterDynamics, 3/18/21 “The latest expansion will add a further 900,000 square feet (83,600 sq m) with two new buildings of 450,000 sq ft (41,800 sq m) each, with servers planned to be on two separate floors. Development is due to finish in 2023…This expansion takes the total to 11 buildings and 4.6 million square feet. In development for over 10 years, it is Facebook’s largest data center campus in the US, and has seen the social media giant invest more than $2 billion into the site…The Prineville Data Center is supported by 100 percent renewable energy, including two solar projects located in Oregon. However, recent regulation changes could affect Facebook’s ability to offset its use of fossil fuels and prevent it from using energy certificates in the state. Currently, the social network buys energy from Pacificorp and uses what is known as the 272 tariff scheme (also called Blue Sky Connect) which allows companies to buy renewable energy certificates to offset actual energy use… However, as first reported by BizJournal, a recent change in regulations means Pacificorp isn’t issuing energy certificates while the company and the energy commission clarify the classification status of the 272 offering.”

the need for power and water to cool all those banks of computers

Facebook engineered a cooling system that involves hundreds of fans to blow air over a mist. In 2022, FB in Prineville used 240,302 cubic meters of water (63,481,073 gallons). For the uninitiated, Prineville is semi-desert. The cooling fans and pumps use almost as much electricity as the computers, but it’s still cheaper than conventional air conditioning.

illustration of FB cooling system courtesy of Mike Rogoway, Oregonian

backup generators

My grandson is an apprentice electrician and has been working at the FB site in Prineville for about 3 years. I asked him what kind of backup they had when the power grid goes down. He said each building has 10 generators, each about 3.4 MW (MegaWatts) and each one sitting on 10,000 gallon tanks of diesel fuel. That’s 37 MW of backup with 110 generators and 110,000 gallons of diesel for eleven buildings. The average daily power use in 2022 was about 2690 MWh, when they only had nine buildings.

Facebook’s energy, water, and fuel use in Prineville

Thanks to Mike Rogoway, business reporter for the Oregonian, for sharing this link with me. The latest figures are for 2022.

Electricity consumption in MWh: 982,177 MWh (MegaWatt hours) Average US household electricity use is 10,500 KWh per year, which is 10.5 MWh, so Facebook’s Prineville use would be enough to power 93,540 households per year.

Water withdrawn

 240,302  cubic meters = 63,481,073 U.S. Gallons

Natural gas  7,539,592 therms - not available specifically for Prineville alone; this figure is a total for all their data centers

Diesel (for backup generators) 1,376,871 gallons - not available specifically for Prineville alone; this figure is a total for all their data centers

global hunger for data - transpacific cable

OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting) 3/21/21   

“Facebook first completed a 300,000-square-foot data center in Prineville 2011, attracted by the high desert's cool nights that keep servers cool, and by a 15-year abatement on property taxes. …The move coincides with the company nearing completion of bringing a fiber-optic cable ashore in Tierra del Mar, Oregon. Crossing the Pacific Ocean, it will link multiple U.S. locations, including Facebook’s huge data center in Prineville, with Japan and the Philippines.”

Facebook’s transpacific cable project was interrupted in 2020 by a broken drill right off the coast which couldn’t be retrieved, and local opposition from Oregon’s tiny coastal community of Tierra del Mar.

of course, Facebook isn’t the only player

April Ehrlich, with Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) reported on Aug.13 2023 that Amazon was now working on the massive cable project. This hits me and my family quite personally because we’ve camped many times at the beach site where Amazon will bring this cable to the U.S.

“Amazon’s cable will stretch about 9,500 miles from Singapore, across the Pacific Ocean through Guam, to a landing site at the Wi-Ne-Ma Christian Camp in rural Tillamook County. It will also have a branch reaching down to Southern California.

The cable will be buried about 5,000 feet deep along Oregon’s sea shelf to ensure it doesn’t interfere with commercial fishing routes. It will run from the ocean to a manhole at its coastal landing site in Tillamook County, where workers will be able to access it for maintenance. From there, workers will bury it at least 3 feet deep along its route from the coast to Hillsboro.

Trenching work for burying the cable has already begun near Highway 6, according to Tillamook County officials. Amazon workers plan to finish installing the cable by April 2024.”

Amazon’s data centers, Boardman

“Amazon plans to build at least five new data centers along the Columbia River in remote Morrow County, a nearly $12 billion project that would more than double the scale of the company’s operations in the region. The undertaking represents one of the largest capital projects in Oregon history — in one of the state’s smallest communities. Morrow County has just about 12,000 residents.”

Google in the Dalles

Google’s cooling system uses cooling towers, unlike Facebook’s Prineville plant

Google has a data center in The Dalles, just off the Columbia River. They have an eight minute video virtual tour of the plant which I just discovered today. This insider’s view of pretty much the whole operation is a must see if you want to know how these data centers work. Just click on this video virtual tour link.

Google’s mechanical room for the cooling tower

Mario Loyola wrote in The Hill January 28 2024 about high electrocity demand:

“The power requirements of AI are staggering. In 2021, Google alone consumed 18 terawatt-hours of electricity, more than many of the world’s nations. According to John Henessy, chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, a Google search assisted by AI can consume 10 times more electricity than a normal Google search. Powered by AI, Google’s energy consumption could triple by 2027.”

more data centers in Hillsboro

In February, NTT Ltd said they were building a 144MW data center campus in Hillsboro, Oregon. The company’s American division, formerly known as RagingWire, is overseeing the project.

At the same time, QTS Realty Trust broke ground on a large hyperscale data center campus also in Hillsboro. Even bigger players like Amazon have gotten in on the action. Last year, the company was given a total exemption from property taxes for 15 years in return for building its seventh data center campus in Oregon.

Oregon data center map

“We currently have 45 data centers listed, from 9 markets in Oregon. Click on a market below, to explore its data center locations.”

map, Portland area

power and energy use

At the same time as electric power demand is increasing astronomically, the current administration policy is to eliminate coal fired power plants, and to require power plants to lower pollution by 90% or shut down. (They have temporarily put that policy on hold during the election because it’s so unpopular.)

critical power shortage

Washington Post March 7 Evan Halper “Vast swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean-technology factories proliferate around the country, leaving utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation’s creaking power grid.”

Doomberg, quoting J.P. Morgan’s Michael Cembalest - “the… (mid-Atlantic) region has made sharp increases to projections of future power demand. These increases are entirely due to an increase in data centers which serve advanced computing/AI needs. Constellation Energy estimates that the AI revolution could require more power in the US than the future electric vehicle fleet.”

Energy Newsbeat reported that Alex de Vries, at the Netherlands’ central bank, wrote in a paper he published last fall, in Joule, a journal devoted to sustainable energy, “de Vries estimated that if Google were to integrate generative A.I. into every search, its electricity use would rise to something like twenty-nine billion kilowatt-hours per year. This is more than is consumed by many countries, including Kenya, Guatemala, and Croatia.”

meanwhile, the US goes totally in the wrong direction

Instead of rising to meet the challenge of the impending energy shortage crisis, the US is doubling down on the suicidal idea of banishing fossil fuels, just when we need them more than ever.

msn news - “The Biden Administration announced Saturday (in 2023) that the United States is committed to phasing out coal power plants nationwide and not building new ones as it moves ahead with its green agenda.”

politico - “The Biden administration is announcing a climate rule that would require most fossil fuel power plants to slash their greenhouse gas pollution 90 percent between 2035 and 2040 — or shut down.”

Let’s hope the country’s leaders come to their senses before we all re-enter the dark ages.