It’s arrived: The evolution of clean power & data centers

[nationalize the fed]

Katie Fehrenbacher | Feb. 18, 2015


Apple’s solar farm in North Carolina. Credit: Apple.

The world’s largest internet companies are turning to clean power to run their data centers like never before. This month we saw huge clean power deals from Apple, including big solar projects planned in California and Arizona, and a big wind buy from Google to provide local power for its headquarters in Silicon Valley.

But it wasn’t always this way. It’s only been in the last several years that Apple, Google, Facebook and others have been embracing clean power as a viable option to provide a significant amount of power for their data centers, and it’s taken years for the power industry, and the internet companies themselves, to adjust to and learn about this emerging world...


Apple’s fuel cell farm next to its data center in Maiden, North Carolina
Credit: Gigaom/Katie Fehrenbacher

...That’s why in late 2011 Apple started building its unusual and massive solar farms in the area. Built by SunPower, these solar farms now stretch across hundreds of acres and now generate more solar power than Apple needs for that facility. The company also has a fuel cell farm built beside the data center. Apple agreed to plug into the state’s grid, but it was also generating its own clean power that went back onto the grid and made up for its use of the dirty grid power.

Apple’s solar farms ended up putting pressure on local utility Duke Energy and the state to recognize that if there was ample clean power provided to these customers from the power grid, then they wouldn’t need to build their own. In late 2013, Duke Energy officially asked the state’s regulators if it could sell clean power from new sources to large energy customers that were willing to buy it — yes, thanks to restrictive regulations and an electricity industry that moves at a glacial pace, this formerly wasn’t allowed.

Now Duke Energy has a clean energy supply program in the state. And just this week, Duke Energy issued a request for proposal asking for project builders to build 50 MW worth of solar projects in the state...SNIP Continued
https://gigaom.com/2015/02/18/its-arrived-the-evolution-of-clean-power-data-centers/

[OnlinePoker]

1. I guess it depends on what is considered "clean" power

The fuel cells in the images above use, I believe, use natural gas to generate their power (probably from fracking). I looked on Google Earth at the site of the solar farm. In 1993, it was rural agricultural land with some forest. By 1998, a highway was being constructed north and east of the property. Gradually, a large part of the farmland began to revert to natural forest, probably because the farmers couldn't make a living on the smallish piece of land. Before the solar farm went in, there was nature, a habitat for birds and animals and a carbon sink. Now, the property is a bare desert, sculpted so Google can continue to make billions. Colour me unimpressed.