Meta Luleå data center

The story

Facebook chose Luleå, a coastal town of about 45,000 at the edge of the Arctic Circle, for its first data centre outside the United States. Hydro plants on the Lule River feed a regional grid that local officials said had not had a high-voltage disruption since 1979, so the company installed more than 70 percent fewer backup generators than it otherwise would, and cold Nordic air cools the servers. The first 27,000 m² building went live in June 2013. A second, assembled from prefabricated modules, followed from 2014, and a 540,000 sq ft third building was announced in 2018. In 2024 the campus used 468,809 MWh of electricity.

Notable

• Meta said the local hydro supply was reliable enough to cut the number of backup generators at the site by more than 70 percent.
• In early tests in 2013 the first building averaged a PUE of about 1.07, according to Meta.
• The second building piloted Meta's Rapid Deployment Data Center design, with Emerson supplying over 250 prefabricated modules.
• Meta reports the Luleå site used 468,809 MWh of electricity in 2024, up from 267,471 MWh in 2022.
• Local officials told Data Center Knowledge there had been no disruption on the area's high-voltage lines since 1979.

Expansions

• 2011: construction begins
• 2013: first building (about 27,000 m²) goes live on 12 June
• 2014: second building (about 125,000 sq ft) built as the pilot of the Rapid Deployment Data Center modular design
• 2018: third building (540,000 sq ft) announced, targeted to serve traffic from early 2021