Panel Installation Nearly Complete at Apple's Massive North Carolina Solar Farm

[turtlez]

1. I don't have to wash my roof .... ever.
2. The solar panels at Apple site: no dual use.
3. No farm land, no forest, no animals, just fancy technology; and this is just for one local facility. Imagine how much land would be tied up if everyone did this. This is not progress. This is PC (as in politically correct).

You are forgetting about deforestation of oil sites that will become less and less though. You're forgetting about air pollution from oil as well.

You should get new glasses that allow you to see past your own nose.'

small fact. I have not had to pay an electricity bill since I had these panels installed and I have a pool pump running 8 hours a day. So for no air pollution I am getting free electricity.

 

[Liquorpuki]

Please, natural gas extraction is not nearly as wasteful of natural space as this solar farm. Not to mention much more energy produced per acre of space than what you're seeing in this photo.

Apple is not a utility. They're not gonna run a natural gas fracking operation and build a huge natural gas plant just so they can power a single building and its tiny little load.

I think Apple actually has a gas fired generator at one of its plants, Oregon I think, and sells excess power back to the utility.

All they have are fuel cells.

As for drilling destroying the land, simply not true. Drill rigs are so small this one is in the parking lot of the Long beach, CA McDonald's!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epw38YmOkcs

Rocketman

That's an oil rig, not a natural gas rig. In both cases, once the resource is depleted, you have to relocate and build another. Repeat X # of times. As opposed to solar, which will just sit there. And unlike solar, which provides automatic energy conversion, you're also gonna have to build a plant to actually turn that NG into electricity. These plants have huge footprints, use turbines made from jet engines, require operators to run and are meant to cover cities, not datacenters.

On top of that, US Natural Gas reserves only have 100 years left til they're gone

 

[darkplanets]

Especially the uneducated clueless children.

Agreed, to a degree. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions though, and when it comes to power there's a lot of considerations over time -- it's essentially a summation of a lot of differentials.

Personally, I'm pro nuclear. I would very much like to have spent fuel rods in my home with thermocouples, provided the efficiency of such increases some more. Although to be honest I'd rather have the fuel rods reprocessed in a breeder reactor, but for some reason the US is afraid of a complete fuel cycle. Hell, they're afraid of anything with the world "nuclear."

 

[cerote]

Well lot of good it will do firing them up on the end of days. 12-21-2012.

 

[Takeo]

I don't think they ever made anything Green either

I know it's fashionable to hate Greenpeace but if not for those annoying s h i t disturbers there'd be no ozone layer, no whales and the French would still be dumping 50 gallon drums of nuclear waste into the ocean. They single-handedly lead the charge on every one of those issues and won. So unless you consider dumping barrels of radioactive waste into the ocean "green" then yes, they have actually done a lot of good.

 

[turtlez]

I know it's fashionable to hate Greenpeace but if not for those annoying s h i t disturbers there'd be no ozone layer, no whales and the French would still be dumping 50 gallon drums of nuclear waste into the ocean. They single-handedly lead the charge on every one of those issues and won. So unless you consider dumping barrels of radioactive waste into the ocean "green" then yes, they have actually done a lot of good.

Unfortunately a lot of people on this forum only watch FOX news though

 

[Boomchukalaka]

Lots of complaints about trees being knocked down to build this renewable energy source. Could trees not be planted elsewhere to offset this? I was at the Dave Matthews Band concert and they had a program to buy a tree to help offset the carbon foot print the concert generated.

 

[etchie]

No farm land, no forest, no animals, just fancy technology; and this is just for one local facility. Imagine how much land would be tied up if everyone did this. This is not progress. This is PC (as in politically correct).

It's not just one local facility. it's a facility with enough servers to hold all the files in the cloud of the current largest company in the world. They aren't going to be building these on every street corner like they would a fast food chain. Also, if other buildings did this, they wouldn't be dealing with the same amount of power (or even close) so their solar panel field wouldn't be nearly as large. How often do you think this much land gets leveled, just to put up structures that aren't going to take any environmental measures? Plenty of people don't think twice about bulldozing land daily without any production of alternative energy in mind. Why would you waste your time here? You've got your work cut out for you elsewhere.

 

[ivladster]

Well, that's one way to waste a lot of good soil.

Good soil? Did you see, it's all red clay. Even corn can't grow in that.

 

[bkushner]

Is this the largest solar field in the world?
Googled it. India has one 5 times this size.

 

[ctdonath]

What. a. waste. of. space.

I'm all for any method to help with energy needs but these pictures show a unique perspective on how silly it looks eating up that much space.

Um...that's what real solar power looks like. That's how much surface it takes to generate enough solar power to run a large data center. That's the reality of solar strip-mining.

And that's what "environmentalists" have been demanding for decades. Now that it's showing up, they're complaining about the environmental impact, uglification, etc. - just what I've long predicted they would.

"Waste of space"? The "before" picture showed half that space as unused woods and half field providing a rather paltry output (if any).

"Silly it looks"? Well, again, that's what real solar power systems look like. And you don't see it unless you're FLYING over it.

 

[dru`]

It's not used by a corporation to cover the tiny load of a building. Apple's not gonna build a nuke plant or a natural gas plant or a coal plant.

Actually, Steve Jobs said the new "mothership" building in Cupertino would include its own natural gas plant.

http://www.cupertino.org/index.aspx?recordid=463&page=410

What were you saying again?

 

[monoskier]

First hail storm should be interesting!

My first thought exactly!

 

[noisycats]

1. I don't have to wash my roof .... ever.

And it is all about you, right?

 

[dru`]

Apple is not a utility. They're not gonna run a natural gas fracking operation and build a huge natural gas plant just so they can power a single building and its tiny little load...

And unlike solar, which provides automatic energy conversion, you're also gonna have to build a plant to actually turn that NG into electricity. These plants have huge footprints, use turbines made from jet engines, require operators to run and are meant to cover cities, not datacenters.

You keep pushing this talking point and YET it's provably FALSE.

Steve Jobs himself revealed plans to build a Natural Gas power plant on the new "mothership" campus.

http://www.cupertino.org/index.aspx?recordid=463&page=410

So, are you going to keep pushing your agenda, your lies about what Apple would do and why they'd never use NG to power a building?

Well?

 

[Jumpthrough]

A solar farm!!

This is so cool

 

[Windlasher]

That is one mega solar farm.

Solar panels are quite an easy way to get renewable energy, but stupidly inefficient in terms of power per unit area covered.

For example, a nuclear power station can produce around 1.8 kilowatts and will use 1 100 acres of land. To produce the same, solar panels need around 13 320 acres of land, depending on the location of course. However, this is better than wind turbines at 108 000 acres.

Yeah, but solar farms don't poison everything around them for 10,000 years when things go wrong.

 

[Liquorpuki]

You keep pushing this talking point and YET it's provably FALSE.

Steve Jobs himself revealed plans to build a Natural Gas power plant on the new "mothership" campus.

http://www.cupertino.org/index.aspx?recordid=463&page=410

So, are you going to keep pushing your agenda, your lies about what Apple would do and why they'd never use NG to power a building?

Well?

It's not a natural gas plant. It's a fuel cell

Fuel Cell = size of a trailer, small output that easily matches the load of a non-industrial building

NG Plant = huge 4-10 story industrial looking structure complete with flue-gas stacks that shoot straight into the sky

But if you really wanna argue that Steve Jobs was planning to build a NG plant that would simultaneously dwarf the spaceship campus and release emissions next to apartment buildings, go for it

Also would love to know what agenda you think I have

 

[Windlasher]

I think Apple actually has a gas fired generator at one of its plants, Oregon I think, and sells excess power back to the utility. If Apple were in the sub-business of installing the greenest possible power generation at most of its locations and reselling it to the utilities it would reduce the transmission loss which would be very green and would provide base load and peak time capacity which is desperately needed on a greener than now basis.

As for drilling destroying the land, simply not true. Drill rigs are so small this one is in the parking lot of the Long beach, CA McDonald's!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epw38YmOkcs

Rocketman

THATS NOT A DRILL RIG. THATS A PUMP. The actual drill rig was much larger.

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Correct. Like if they ever let them drill in ANWAR out of the millions upon millions of acres the actual drilling operation would use something like 0.5% of the overall land mass.

In the end groups like Greenpeace simply want to drive the advancement of mankind back to the stone age.....all the while they use technology like it's going to go out of style.

INCORRECT: THATS NOT A DRILL RIG. THATS A PUMP.

The actual drill rig was much larger. Not to mention building roads and supply lines, to get the equipment there, housing for workers, stores, etc....

Thats how the land gets all messed up.

 

[Rocketman]

THATS NOT A DRILL RIG. THATS A PUMP. The actual drill rig was much larger.

INCORRECT: THATS NOT A DRILL RIG. THATS A PUMP.

The actual drill rig was much larger. Not to mention building roads and supply lines, to get the equipment there, housing for workers, stores, etc....

Thats how the land gets all messed up.

I agree that was a pump not the drill rig that installed it. I have worked on drill rigs and here's what they look like before you install the pump.

It involves 4-5 trucks on a site the size of a good sized house lot.

http://v-serv.com/usr/oilfield2.htm

Someone else suggested that the pump might not last very long. The ones nearby me in La Habra and Hacienda heights California have been running since I was an infant at least and except for maintenance they look exactly the same they always have. Sometimes someone will paint animal characters on the pump. That is actually a field of perhaps 4 dozen or more pumps. That land is fenced off and is used for cattle grazing too, but each rig is perhaps 500 feet apart or so. I understand they no longer do it that way with angled drilling, and they use 1/10 as many drill sites now.

Hope this helps and sorry for the firestorm when I misstated my off the cuff guess the natural gas generation plant was in Prineville when it was actually in Cupertino, a much more green concerned area due to the population and their social standards.

Rocketman

 

[Ugg]

Someone else suggested that the pump might not last very long. The ones nearby me in La Habra and Hacienda heights California have been running since I was an infant at least and except for maintenance they look exactly the same they always have. Sometimes someone will paint animal characters on the pump. That is actually a field of perhaps 4 dozen or more pumps. That land is fenced off and is used for cattle grazing too, but each rig is perhaps 500 feet apart or so. I understand they no longer do it that way with angled drilling, and they use 1/10 as many drill sites now.

They don't graze cattle in ANWR.

You do understand that permafrost lies under the ares in ANWR that the oil companies want to drill on and that permafrost needs to be dealt with very carefully so that it doesn't collapse the drills and or pumps?

 

[Thunderbird]

If you really want to know the dirt about Greenpeace, I suggest you read "Blown to Green Pieces" and a few other non-biased investigative reports on these guys. Of all these reports, there are allegations of:

* While Greenpeace is non-profit, many connected to them short stocks of the companies they publicly criticized for personal profit.

* Many living on the Rainbow Warrior reside at sea avoiding extraditions.

* They only promote saving "cute" animals thus redirecting paternal instincts away from child-rearing and toward their political cause.

* Many of their "environmental crime" photos have been examined by photo-analysis experts exposing them as Photoshopped beyond simple color correction editing.

* The active suppression of capitalism claiming it is "bad for the planet" while promoting socialist agenda. History shows, socialist government have a far greater history of environmental abuse than free market economies.

* A "Logan's Run" society where over 90% of volunteers or minimum wage Greenpeace employees are terminated at age 30 to recruit younger and more attractive activists.

It goes on and on. IMO, if Greenpeace complains about you, consider it a badge of honor that you are doing something right.

More unsubstantiated smears by anti-environmental whackos.

 

[Tomb01]

Very cool... I guess, though, that they must not use electricity at night?

 

[ArmouredGuitar]

Is this the largest solar field in the world?
Googled it. India has one 5 times this size.

First Solar has a 550MW solar farm built in the US. I work on a current 20MW being built and it spans over 500Acres. We use a I beam system of installing 10's of 1000's of posts and connecting rails. The panels slide into the rail and your done. We don't affect or touch the earth below the panels what so ever. When the farm/If the farm gets decommissioned. We just yank all the steel and recycle it all and it goes back to agriculture practices.

Ag

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Very cool... I guess, though, that they must not use electricity at night?

Don't be fooled, the panels are very active in moonlight and twilight conditions.

 

[damir00]

Good soil? Did you see, it's all red clay. Even corn can't grow in that.

Yeah.

That would explain why the site is surrounded by (and laced with) green growth.



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We don't affect or touch the earth below the panels what so ever.

So you're installing transparent panels, then?