The future of television is carbon neutral.
TV streaming via a wind turbine
Together with Westfalenwind, we are working on the carbon neutral television of the future. With the wind farm operator’s windCORES project, we’re bringing our data centre directly into a wind turbine. Watch our project film to see exactly how it works!
«The idea of bringing computing capacity closer to energy production while still tapping into unused space and cooling is so simple and obvious, and from our point of view a project that we hope will set a precedent.»
Stefan Lietsch – CTO & Climate Officer at Zattoo
WindCORES & Zattoo
Renewable electricity, directly in the 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 and what’s happening next?
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. An expansion of the storage capacity is planned for the coming year in order to move additional capacity from our other centre in Frankfurt.
Making the digital world greener.
The energy demand due to advancing digitalisation is huge. The wind farm operator Westfalenwind wants to meet this demand and have developed the windCORES project in the spirit of energy transition to renewables. And that is why they take care of a significant part in the global energy and climate footprint: the data centres. From time to time, wind turbines have to be switched off to ensure a stable power grid. The wind energy that is not used during this time could supply around one third of all data centres in Germany. This is why Westfalenwind wants to place these data centres directly in the wind turbines and use the electricity directly on site. They already received the German Data Centre Prize in 2019 for this idea.
More about windCORES
The future of television is carbon neutral.
In order to continuously reduce our CO2 consumption, we need to know exactly how much we consume. To do this, we calculate our carbon footprint with the help of ClimatePartner. This calculation serves as a basis for us to identify further reduction measures and then completely offset our remaining consumption. We’re already a carbon neutral TV streaming provider. You can find out exactly how we do this on our main page.
Learn more