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eBay Utah Data Center Earns LEED Gold

eBay says its new "Topaz" data center in South Jordan, Utah has earned Gold-level certification under the LEED ( Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program for energy efficient buildings.

The new eBay data center in West Jordan, Utah, in the shadow of the Oquirrh Mountains.

eBay says its new "Topaz" data center in South Jordan, Utah has earned Gold-level certification under the LEED ( Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program for energy efficient buildings. The certification was the second LEED Gold data center award for eBay, which previously had one of its San Jose facilities earn that distinction, according to a blog post by Dean Nelson, eBay’s Senior Director of Global Data Center Strategy.

The $287 million Utah data center, which came online in May, will be the flagship facility for eBay, hosting the eBay.com and Paypal.com web sites. The first phase of the Topaz project is a 240,000 square foot building housing three 20,000 square foot data center halls – one for eBay Marketplace, one for PayPal.com, and a third hall for expansion space. The master plan for the site calls for four phases, which will allow eBay to consolidate leased data center space currently spread across three states. The facility has 7.2 megawatts of capacity in phase 1, with a 30 megawatt substation on site.

Here’s a look at some of the energy efficiency features built into the new facility:

  • eBay is using 400V power distribution, allowing it to eliminate an entire level of transformers and deliver 230V to the servers, saving 2 percent in power costs.
  • The data center is cooled using a water-side economizer system, which is supported by a 400,000 gallon cistern that collects rain water. eBay expects to use outside air to cool the data center for more than half the year.
  • Inside the data center, eBay will use in-row cooling units for close-coupled cooling, and a hot air containment system to isolate the hot and cold air within the server area.
  • eBay says it can support power densities of up to 30kw per rack using this design.

Nelson said he expects to achieve a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.4.

For more on adoption of LEED in the data center sector, see our Green Data Centers Channel and our feature on LEED Platinum Data Centers.

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