Glen Enlow Public Page: Kolos: The World’s Biggest Data Center Will Be Worthy of James Bond

Kolos world's biggest data center Norway

“Data centers” may not be the sexiest words in the English language, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be beautiful, sleek and forward-thinking. Kolos, a Norwegian and American company with offices in Norway, the US and Europe, is building what it calls “the most innovative, energy-efficient and secure data center in the world, powered by 100% renewable energy.”

Located in a fjord in Ballangen, Norway, a small town 140 miles north of the Arctic Circle, its design aims to express the integration of technology and nature. Upon completion, it will become the world’s largest data center by passing Range International’s facility in Langfang, China, which spans 6.3 million square feet.

Kolos aims to break all records with its facility, drawing on 1000 megawatts of power, but it’s not just about size. The facility is scheduled to open next year and models a new class of hyper-scale data centers with sustainability, cost-effectiveness and security at the heart of the design.

Its own James Bond-worthy description: “A fortress for data, the Kolos site is surrounded by water and hills, providing a natural moat to protect against any physical risks.” The center will be powered by hydroelectric power and leverage the cold environs to mitigate the cost of cooling servers.

Facebook has a data center operations at its new facility across the border in Lulea, opened in Sweden in 2013. “The potential is over 1,000 megawatt, which would be the largest in the world,” Kolos Co-CEO Håvard Lillebo told Bloomberg of the ambitious project.

As his fellow Co-CEO Mark Robinson puts it, “The team understands the importance of building the world’s most powerful data center with respect for the community and environment.”

“We can scale up to two gigawatts of excess power from hydroelectric generation facilities within 25 kilometers of the planned site. No data center on earth has access to such abundant, clean and inexpensive power.”

Kolos world's biggest data center

The Kolos facility—which is backed by investors including Headwaters MB, will stretch over 600,000 square meters, and the four-story structure’s design to mimics a glacier’s movement and integrates with the natural environment.

“The architects took cues from its setting, a fjord surrounded by mountains and glaciers,” as DesignBoom notes of HDR’s design. “Organized along a central spine, the building’s forms are arranged ‘to mimic a glacier’s movement as it displaces swaths of land, like a mountain.’ Data halls are organized around the central spine of the expansive center and are covered in green roofs.”

As HDR notes, the Kolos green facility “is the latest iteration in a boom of Nordic data centers servicing major network-centric Internet companies. These include a big Facebook facility in Sweden with a second Facebook center in Denmark, a large Google facility in Finland, two Apple data centers in Denmark, and a recently opened center in a former mine in Norway used by IBM. Typically, the world’s largest data centers to date—including major facilities in China—have ranged from 100MW to 200MW in terms of total power consumed to power the extensive servers contained within these mega centers.”

Set to service the exponential growth of the global data market, the Kolos facility will handle high-speed traffic from the US to continental Europe. Low energy rates will appeal to companies with intensive loads, boasting access to seven different dark-fiber routes with a 32ms-to-34ms connection to the main European peering points in Amsterdam.

“This is mainly a colocation facility, so we’re not targeting the Googles, the Amazons, the Apples,” said Lillebo. “We aim to have the next 990 on the list.”

Built on reclaimed land and created with the tailings of a former mine in the surrounding mountains, the site was previously used as a small airport and for flood control. The new facility will create 2,000 to 3,000 new jobs and support an additional 10,000 to 15,000 jobs in the remote area.

“Kolos represents a one-of-a-kind opportunity to change the data center paradigm globally,” Headwaters MB President & COO Paul Janson stated. “Currently, operators are hosting data center infrastructure in some of the largest, most densely populated cities across Europe, with staggering real estate and energy costs. This is the game-changer that will serve as a model for the industry to reduce carbon emissions and eliminate reliance on fossil fuels.”

Below, find out more on the branding of what will become the world’s largest green data center: