Facebook broke ground at the company's newest data center in Fort Worth, Texas, where it said that the company will be making an investment of at least $500 million.

The location of the data center is unusual, considering the relatively hot climate in Texas and the massive cooling requirements that a data center requires to protect its systems. However, Facebook said that it is handling the matter.

In the announcement of Facebook on the new Fort Worth data center, the company said that it will provide power to the location using only renewable energy that will come from 200 megawatts of wind power. The data center will acquire its needed power from a new clean energy project that will be completed next year.

"200 MW is more energy than we will need for the foreseeable future, and we're proud to have played a role in bringing this project to Texas," said Facebook's director of data center operation for the western region, Ken Patchett.

As for the issue of keeping the data center cool, Facebook does not see it as a problem. The company has another data center located in North Carolina, which has hot humid southern heat. Facebook, however, has been able to keep the data center cool, and it will be using the same methods that it used there with the data center in Fort Worth.

There will be many eyes on Facebook as it looks to keep costs down at the upcoming Fort Worth data center while keeping the temperatures down at the site. Considered as pioneers in data center technology, Facebook has launched the Open Compute Project.

As Facebook established its data center in Oregon, the company launched a new plan for saving energy, which it has since introduced to other operating locations. The company then released its plans for its hardware in such locations through the Open Compute Project to allow the data centers of other companies to follow best practices.

The data center in Fort Worth will feature three buildings covering 250,000 square feet, with 40 employees who are Fort Worth residents. The project has been approved by the city council to receive an incentive package worth $146.7 million.

The Fort Worth data center will be Facebook's fifth one, with others located in Oregon, Iowa, North Carolina and Sweden.

Photo: Andrew Feinberg | Flickr