Finding Green IT in the Fjords of Norway
A lot of attention has been paid to green data centers in northern climates, particularly in Scandinavia where Google has built a green data center in Finland while others have built centers in Sweden and Norway.
Fjord IT, a two-year old startup company based in Norway (in case it wasn’t apparent from the use of ‘fjord’ in the company name), is looking to capitalize on that green data center interest. Specifically, the company has recently announced the opening of a 1,000 square meter pilot data center space in the country’s capital of Oslo.
According to Fjord IT CEO Helge Gallefoss, who spoke at the recent The Green Grid Forum a couple of weeks ago, the Oslo data center precedes a larger one to be built in Notodden, a town west of Oslo, this summer. That data center will be larger and feature more potentially innovative cooling technologies such as using Norway’s typically cool outside air (even in the summer, mountainous areas tend to drop to levels acceptable for machine-cooling) and water.
The private company has secured a first round of $2.5 million of funding from investors in Europe and Hong Kong and is hoping more European investors, such as those in Germany, will contribute to a $10 million second funding round goal.
To potentially help that second round of investment is the announcement that Fjord IT has found its first customer for their Oslo space: reportedly business software service vendor 24SevenOffice.
The notion here is that Fjord IT’s green mission, one which will also be heavily powered by hydropower since 95 percent of Norway’s electricity is generated through the manipulation of flowing water, will appeal to companies looking to either keep their energy bills down or make a name for themselves in the green industry.
The Oslo datacenter reports a PUE of around 1.3, while they are designing the Notodden facility to have a PUE in the 1.05 range. While these numbers need of course to be verified over the course of a year, it is important to note that Fjord IT is positioned, with their northern location and large swaths of hydropower available, to achieve such metrics.
Metrics are not the focus here, however. Promoting cleaner data center practices are, and Fjord IT looks to appeal to like-minded vendors.
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