Facebook plans $1.5b expansion for Iowa data center

Facebook has plans to expand its Altoona, Iowa, data center in a projected $1.5 billion spend, according to local news source KCCI Des Moines.

KCCI reported that the online social media and social networking service company will request permission to expand the existing data center buildings. If approved, construction could start this fall.

Currently construction is being done on Facebook’s fifth and sixth building at the site.

KCCI reported that the Altoona site project is the company’s largest construction site in the world.

The project is expected to be completed by 2020.

Facebook has been actively expanding in the past few years. In late 2017, Facebook had made plans to construct two additional data centers in Prineville, Ore. The two new facilities will total 970,000 square feet, bringing total data center and cold storage space to almost 2.2 million square feet. The new data centers will go online in 2021.

And in November 2017, Facebook announced it would increase the investment in its data center operations in Los Lunas, N.M., to $1 billion, tripling the size of the facilities there. In total, the company will build six $250 million, 510,000-square-foot buildings there. And the local Public Service Company of New Mexico will build solar power plants to power the campus.