Update on Prineville FB Data Center

Prineville data center viewed from Google Earth

Today I had a conversation with Prineville City Planner Josh Smith about Facebook’s data center, one of the largest plants in the world. Prineville, in Crook County Oregon, latest population listed as 12,114, is located in what we Oregonians call the “High Desert”. I had contacted the city because after publishing Oregon’s Mighty Data Centers last week, I still had a few questions to tie up some loose ends. Josh Smith was very courteous and helpful.

Because of Facebook’s huge water usage, they have compensated by working with the city to mutually establish an innovative water system.

“The data centers certainly spurred the need for an innovative solution, but due to growth we would have needed one anyway.  The Aquifer Storage and Recovery System (ASR), was a mutual solution to serve everyone’s needs.”

“When our water demand as a City is low in the winter (including data centers), we pump excess capacity into our underground aquifer.  During the summer months when our demand is high we have this reserve capacity if needed.  This aquifer has the potential to hold ~800 million gallons above its natural level.  We are currently testing its limits.  So far we have not needed to pump out more than we have injected. This year will be the 5^th time we have injected water over the winter.  We estimate we have ~400 million stored.” 

“The City as a whole uses ~700 million gallons a year (including the data centers).  The majority of the water used by the data centers is during the hottest days of the summer.  Their usage is extremely variable based on yearly temperature, but it is a small fraction of the total.  Further analysis would be needed for actual numbers.

I had earlier read that FB’s 11th building was scheduled to be finished by now, and Josh confirmed that the building was completed, but may not be fully up to speed yet.

“Meta has finished there 11^th building, but I do not believe it is populated with servers yet.  Newer data centers intend to move away from water cooling.”

In answer to a question, he also told me that the fans were quiet and there were no citizen complaints about noise.