US data centre services company DataBank is powering one of its facilities in Minneapolis with 100% renewable electricity from wind.
The company has signed an agreement with utility provider Dakota Electric Association to purchase 100% renewable energy to meet all 6MW of critical IT load for the MSP2 data centre for the next five years.
The renewable power is being provided through Dakota Electric’s Wellspring programme, which will procure the power from clean wind sources provided by Great River Energy.
DataBank had already begun preparing to offset a majority of MSP2’s power requirements when it was approached by its largest customer in the data centre, an “F1000 enterprise software company”.
As part of its own CSR initiative, the customer had the goal of reducing its environmental impact across the company, and asked DataBank if it was possible to use renewable sources for all its power consumption in MSP2.
Following the request DataBank made the decision to purchase enough green power from Dakota Electric to cover 100% of MSP2’s needs.
DataBank’s IND1 and IND2 data centres in Indianapolis are also powered by 100% renewable energy sources.
Last year, US data centres used more than 90 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, representing up to 3% of all US electricity consumed, according to the US Department of Energy.
DataBank president and chief financial officer Kevin Ooley said: “Green energy and sustainability are critical aspects of DataBank’s Data Center Evolved strategy.
“This milestone reached at our Minneapolis data center is a major step toward enhanced energy efficiency across DataBank’s portfolio and a further example of how we enhance the data centre experience for our customers.”