Apple Expanding Its North Carolina iDataCenter

apple-maiden-tactical

An aerial view of the Apple data center campus in Maiden, North Carolina, showing the company's first "tactical data center" visible at left. Apple has filed plans to build a second tactical facility at the campus. (Photo: Apple)

Apple is preparing to expand its data center campus in Maiden, North Carolina, which supports the delivery of content for its iTunes and iCloud services. Apple has filed plans with Catawba County to add a "tactical data center" to its campus in Maiden, according to local media.

This will be the second tactical facility at the Apple campus, which is anchored by a huge 500,000 square foot data center. In 2012, Apple added its first tactical data center, a 21,000 square foot facility on a concrete pad.

An erosion permit for the new tactical data center was filed Wednesday with Catawba County, according to the Hickory Daily Record. The plans filed with the county indicate the data center will be 25 feet tall and made of precast concrete wall panels along steel columns, with banks of servers housed in the main portion and 11 air units to cool the building. Two more air units will supply the office and other occupied area of the data center.

The iDataCenter in Maiden is providing support for Apple’s iCloud service, which stores and synchronizes music, photos and data across multiple devices. The main building features a one-story data center floor spanning about 180,000 feet of space, enclosed by more than 262,000 square feet of space supporting mechanical and electrical systems to support power and cooling, and about 60,000 square feet of office space.

The Apple campus is supported by renewable energy from two separate 100-acre solar arrays in Maiden, which each produce 42 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy annually. Apple also uses biogas from nearby landfills to power Bloom Energy Server fuel cells at its Maiden site.