50 Megawatt Data Center in Sacramento

Feedbach Forum is a relatively new data center blog from Tom Offenbach, who previously worked as an executive for Equinix. He’s now working with Advanced Data Centers Inc., which is building a data center in Sacramento that will have 50 megawatts of power. Tom says this is “the most power at any data center site that I have ever come across.”

That’s a boatload of power. By comparison, Microsoft’s 470,000 square foot data center in Quincy, Washington is reported to have 48 megawatts of power from the local utility. The ADC data center at McClellan Air Force Base is 156,600 square feet, meaning it has more power with a footprint a third the size of Microsoft’s. The facility is a windowless concrete structure built by the US Air Force.

ADC says it expects the new data center to meet the LEED Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Buildings Council, the highest rating availability for energy efficient buildings. To date the highest LEED rating for a data center has been a Gold level certification for a Digital Realty facility in Chicago.

The building’s utility is the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), which acquires energy through hydro generation, cogeneration plants and renewable technologies in addition to purchasing power on the wholesale market.

Advanced Data Centers is led by a team of industry veterans. Chief data center architect Bob Seese was formerly the Chief Data Center Architect with EDS and the Director of Data Center Development with Equinix. President Michael Cohen is a principal in Aperture Ventures, Inc and also worked at Global Crossing Ventures. Offenbach is the vice president of sales.

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About Rich Miller

Rich Miller is the founder and editor-in-chief of Data Center Knowledge, and has been reporting on the data center sector since 2000. He has tracked the growing impact of high-density computing on the power and cooling of data centers, and the resulting push for improved energy efficiency in these facilities.