TV and streaming powered by a wind turbine

What’s this project about?

Since 2020, one of Zattoo’s data centres has been located right inside a wind turbine. With the windCORES project of the wind farm operator Westfalenwind, we’re not just relying on renewable electricity from wind energy. The data that is generated when streaming via Zattoo runs through our own data centre, located right inside a wind turbine. This project is a real innovation and the first of its kind in the world.

Why is this so important?

Zattoo has around 3 million active users per month and up to 350,000 users per day. At peak times and during certain TV highlights, there are even around 600,000 users. In addition, Zattoo also makes its technology available as a TV-as-a-service platform to media companies and network operators worldwide. In Germany, Zattoo’s customers include 1&1 Telecom and NetCologne, and in Switzerland the network operator Salt Mobile. This makes Zattoo one of the largest TV streaming providers in Europe. More than 80 million hours are streamed via Zattoo every month. This generates more than 5 million gigabytes of data – every day! This meant our old data centres were using around 1 million kilowatt hours per year.

What’s the current status?

The move of our first servers into the wind turbine in Paderborn took place at the end of 2020. After initial system tests, we put the first units into operation in mid-January 2021. Our data centre, which is powered directly by wind energy through windCORES, is focused on video processing and storage for our service in Germany. We currently have 18 petabytes of storage capacity in this data centre - this corresponds to 60% of our storage space in Germany. In addition, 280 encrypted channels are currently running through this data centre, and the number is increasing.