December 21, 2024

Apple Announces Its Data Center Will Be Powered Entirely By Renewable Energy

Posted May 17, 2012 at 6:33pm by iClarified · 12735 views
Apple has announced that its Maiden, North Carolina data center will soon be powered entirely by renewable sources. To accomplish this, Apple is building its own facilities that will provide over 60 percent of the clean power needed.

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Apple's data center in Maiden, North Carolina, will draw about 20 megawatts of power at full capacity. We'll be producing an unprecedented 60 percent of this power onsite. To do that, we're building what will be the nation's largest private solar arrays and the largest non-utility fuel cell installation operating anywhere in the country. That's a scale of onsite renewable energy production that no other company has matched. Onsite energy generation minimizes our dependence on the grid and reduces our environmental impact. And when our solar arrays and fuel cells are operating, Apple's Maiden data center will be the most environmentally sound data center ever built.

We're currently building two solar array installations in and around Maiden. These sites use high-efficiency solar cells and an advanced solar tracking system. A 100-acre, 20-megawatt installation on the same site as our data center will produce 42 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy annually. A 100-acre site located a few miles away will produce another 42 million kWh. Together that's 84 million kWh of clean, renewable energy supplied annually. When our bio-gas-powered 5-megawatt fuel cell installation comes online later this year, it will provide more than 40 million kWh of renewable energy annually. This means Apple will be producing enough onsite renewable energy - 124 million kWh - to power the equivalent of 10,874 homes.
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You can read more about Apple's plan at the link below...

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