A few days ago, Yahoo has officially opened a new energy-efficient data center which has been designed after a chicken coop (this way the air will circulate more easily). Thanks to its design, the building will save the company millions in data center costs.

The 155,000-square-foot facility is located in Lockport, N.Y., and unlike conventional ones, it uses 95 percent less water and 40 percent less energy. The energy-efficient data center has a power usage effectiveness rating of 1.08, which is quite less compared to the industry average of 1.92.

The new building is capable of holding 50,000 servers and besides this it is also located to take advantage of prevailing winds. The facility, called the Yahoo Computing Coop (YCC), doesn’t contain any chillers.

“It’s a passively cooled facility, much like you’d find in chicken coops. It’s designed to maximize the pass of airflow. This is how we cooled buildings before we used the mechanical brute force of chillers,” explains Christina Page, director of climate and energy strategy at Yahoo.

According to company officials, Yahoo’s data center will use 40 percent less electricity than typical ones and only one percent of its energy bill on cooling. Yahoo has received about $9.9 million grant from the Department of Energy Green IT (DOE) to finish the construction.

greenoptimistic.com