Yahoo! getting nearly $10M government grant for its New York data center

We told you elsewhere about HP's $7.4 million grant from the United States Department of Energy to develop an energy-efficient modular data center. HP's was the third-largest grant given by the DOE on January 6. That day the DOE announced a total of $47 million in grants to improve efficiency in information technology and telecommunications systems.

The largest grant given that day, more than $9.9 million, went to Yahoo! for the design and engineering of a passive cooling architecture in its under-construction data center in Lockport, NY. It has been reported that the data center will cost around $150 million to build. Lockport is near Niagara Falls and the data center's power will be generated by the Falls.

Here's how the DOE described the effort when announcing the grant.

The integrated building design, including the building's shape and orientation and the alignment of the servers within the building, allows the data center to use outside ambient air for cooling 99 percent of the year. The relatively low initial cost to build, compatibility with current server and network models, and efficient use of power and water are all key featrues that make this data center a highly compatible and replicable design innovation for the data center industry.

That's all I have for now. Yahoo! did not immediately respond to my request for more information about the data center or its passive-cooling architecture. Perhaps you have more detail on this than I do. If so, please share what you know with us all.