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Apple data center to run entirely on clean energy
The company's new data center in North Carolina will generate 60% of its power needs onsite.
Fri, May 25 2012 at 1:30 PM
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Photo: russf/Flickr
Apple’s massive 500,000 square-foot Project Dolphin data center in Maiden, N.C., is taking clean energy to a new level. Apple has confirmed its commitment to environmentally responsible business practices with the announcement that the facility will be powered completely by clean, renewable energy by the end of 2012. Yes, in just a few short months the power-hungry data center, which will use about 20 megawatts of power when it reaches full capacity, will be running on 100 percent clean power.
If that doesn’t amaze you, then perhaps this figure will: 60 percent of this clean energy will be generated onsite. The onsite generation will come from two 100-acre solar array installations. Each solar array is capable of producing 42 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity annually.
The 84 million kWh combined solar power will be added to the 40 million kWh of electricity that will be produced by an onsite biogas-powered 5-megawatt fuel cell installation for a total of 124 million kWh of clean onsite power. To put that into perspective, this is enough electricity to provide power to nearly 11,000 homes.
Apple is generating 60 percent of the power onsite but the other 40 percent of the data center’s power needs will be purchased from local and regional sources. One of these power sources is the Catawba County landfill.
NC Greenpower will be working with the landfill to convert methane gas generated by the waste into usable electricity that will help power the Project Dolphin data center.
Learn more about Apple’s commitment to clean energy at its North Carolina data center by visiting the Apple and the Environment Data Center and Renewable Energy website.
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I have long wondered....how can all the heat generated by the servers be harnessed?
That's an interesting concept. I've been in many server rooms over my lifetime (I was a network admin back in the 1990s) and while the rooms, themselves, are typically very cool the servers do generate quite a bit of heat. It would be great if this could be harness and converted into usable energy.
I see this as a very good thing. I see it as a hopeful thing. When the government tries to mandate standards for clean energy, everybody gets in an uproar. But successful efforts from the bottom up, so to speak, may eventually become ubiquitous.
Probably a very careful examination of installation costs vs downstream savings with not using other energy sources. BTW did they make any statement about the length of time before payback?
Thanks for your comment ernestpayne32. I poked around Apple's site and I couldn't find any ROI predictions listed, unfortunately.