Scheduled for opening in 2012, the facility will rely on fresh air for cooling, rather than using energy-intensive chillers.
Inspired by the heat management principles found in chicken coops, this design was first implemented in Yahoo's recently opened data centre in Lockport, New York in the US.
However, the Swiss project differs from the Lockport data centre in that Yahoo is taking an existing facility and converting it for data centre use instead of using factory-built modules, as was the case in Lockport.
"We're proud of this design because it's a retrofit of an older structure [built in the '60s] that will allow operation of YCC technology," said Scott Noteboom, director of data centre operations for Yahoo. "We've figured out how to make it work in other situations aside from just pre-engineered structure built from the ground up. The design approach is almost identical in efficiency and approach to what we did in Lockport.”
In its first major European data centre build, Yahoo has been searching the Avenches area for potential sites since 2007.
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