Microsoft looking to invest $2.7 billion in a new Dutch data center

Microsoft is looking to invest in the planning and construction of a new data centre at an industry site in Noord-Holland, Netherlands. The price tag on the project? 2 billion euros ($2.7 billion), which would see a new "green" data centre built on a site that will take up 40 acres worth of ground near the A7 highway.

Numerous countries were reportedly in talks with Microsoft to secure a contract, but the decision was awarded to the Netherlands. How would the data centre be power efficient and supplied by green energy? Local greenhouses use ground-coupled heat exchangers and produce more electricity than required, which will open up new doors for Microsoft's new power-hungry project. Energy supplier Tennet is said to be on the plan as backup.

Heat would also be transferred from the datacentre to the greenhouses, making it a rather lucrative deal for both parties. So what will this mean for consumers? We could well be looking at infrastructure being deployed for Xbox One and other services provided by the company. Adding a data centre to Europe will provide yet more scale to Microsoft's operations in the region. Microsoft already has a local data centre in Amsterdam for its Azure web services.

It's still early days for this new project, so it's worth noting this deal could fall through completely.

Source: Tweakers (Dutch); thanks, MartinSpire, for the heads up and translation!