Facebook data center report reveals power usage

Facebook recently released just how much power its Prineville data center used last year. It’s enough energy to power 6,500 homes.

The report also examines the energy use and carbon footprint per Facebook user.

As companies like Facebook and Apple rapidly expand with new data centers, including facilities here in Central Oregon, the facilities use a lot of power.

But the average power customer in a home in Prineville won’t be paying any more for power related to Facebook’s presence in Crook County.

When Facebook shared a company-wide report on their environmental impact from 2011, the social network with nearly a billion users revealed it used 71 million kilowatt hours of power at the Prineville data center.

“That’s a lot of power,” said Bob Jenks, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board of Oregon. “The average residential customer in Oregon uses somewhere around 900 kilowatt hours per month.”

The Citizens Utility Board of Oregon is a non-profit group representing the interests of residential customers.

“When you get into the millions, that’s on a scale that is completely different and would be enough to do many thousand households,” Jenks said.

Jenks estimated that amount of energy could power 6,500 homes.

“All of us that are Internet users are causing the need for data centers,” Jenks said. “And they are going to go somewhere.”

And somewhere just happens to be Central Oregon, for some facilities.

Jason Carr, the director of Prineville Economic Development, says the amount of power used by the Facebook facility won’t have an impact on Prineville customers.

The company pays for the upgrades they need to power the facilities.

“The reality is that it’s pretty difficult for any company to be powered completely off renewables,” Carr said. “Especially when you are using as much power as a data center or large manufacturing facility.”

And those upgrades include new power lines, transmission lines and transformers.

“At the end of the day, all of us, whether we are residential or commercial customers, will probably end up paying more in power as time goes on,” Carr said.

Prineville officials say Facebook has kept up with its promise of being green.

“Facebook has certainly always wanted to do everything it can to use as many renewables as possible,” Carr said. “And I think that that will continue to take place.”

Environmental groups like Greenpeace, which previously launched a campaign critical of the social networking giant’s use of coal-generated power, are taking notice of Facebook’s initiative to reduce its reliance on other types of energy.

A Greenpeace official in San Francisco told NewsChannel 21 Tuesday he applauds Facebook for its transparency on just how much energy it uses — something that not many technology companies have done.