In October, Oracle Corp broke ground on its new “compute center” in West Jordan, Utah,a  $285m facility of 179,000ft2  data center,  to employ 100 workers. The Cable & Wireless huge data farm will be physically located close to multiple renewable power sources such as a nearby biomass plant and local wind farms.

Thanks to the 'bracing' Scottish weather, the low temperatures make it viable to use outside air to cool the data farm, and 'waste energy' will be re-used to heat homes in the eco-village.

The idea is that the development comprises a complete "live, work and play" environment, with the people in the houses either working in the data farm where 500 jobs are expected to be created (no carbon-generating travel involved) or working in their homes or in other offices as network-attached knowledge workers - telecommuters, freelancers, local micro-businesses and so on.

As well as being sustainable in the green sense, the village will also conform to a 'rural sustainability' ideal, by helping to regenerate the economy of the area. According to THUS the attraction of the data centre will be its ability to "give businesses with burgeoning carbon footprints and data storage costs a chance to boost their green credentials while saving money."

As well as providing the significant amounts of connectivity required for the data centre, THUS will also be providing 100Mbit/s Ethernet connections to all the houses.

Lead player in the development is Internet Villages International Limited (IVI), a specialist sustainable property company which expects that total planned investment will be in the region of £1.2bn.

The data farm and its  storage is designed to accommodate the expected growth in applications around secure data storage and cloud computing and, when completed, is claiming it will to be the largest of its type in the world.

Source: http://web20.telecomtv.com
Webs: http://www.cw.com/
http://www.cygnets.co.uk/village/info.html
http://www.telework.org.uk/
Off-grid data centre: http://www.computescotland.com/off-grid-data-centre-for-scotland-powered-by-tidal-energy-1783.php