Note: This article has been edited to make it clear GreenQloud is a cloud services company, and with more recent data on Seattle City Light’s fuel mix.
We’ve written about Iceland being some sort of mecca of green energy for data centers thanks to it’s abundance of hydroelectric and geothermal energy. On top of that, it’s location is conveniently between Europe and North America can potentially give it some advantages for hosting data. Thanks to these factors, data centers and cloud services companies like GreenQloud have popped up on Iceland, targeting consumers who are looking for cloud services with less carbon involved.
Staying put in Iceland gives some accessibility problems, as some U.S. customers require servers to be housed in the United States. Due to that, GreenQloud has chosen Digital Fortress as their U.S. installation, which is located in Seattle and is powered by Seattle City Light. Their fuel mix is 89.8% hydro, 3.9% wind, 4.4% nuclear, 0.8% coal and 1.1% landfill gases and other sources.
“Using Digital Fortress and creating a separate and independent operation in the US meets our stringent renewable energy requirements while enabling US-based companies – who require their cloud provider to have datacenter locations in the US – to utilize GreenQloud’s server hosting, storage and syncing solutions,” says Bala Kamallakharan, CEO of GreenQloud.
Customers will now be able to choose between the U.S. and Iceland when using their suite of GreenQloud products, such as the dropbox-style client, QloudSync, we covered recently, or more traditional hosting.
