Apple Building Solar Farm at North Carolina Data Center

[djrobsd]

DID ANY ONE BOTHER TO READ THE STORY?

Apple is clear cutting and burning 150+ acres of forest to make room for the solar farm. That doesn't seem very green for me, in fact, all the carbon emissions put out by burning all those trees must be a royal flush down the toilet for any "green" benefits earned by the solar farm...

Apple is a bunch of hypocrites, saying they are going green and then burning an entire forest down, with ZERO consideration for the people who live around the data center who have to breathe in all the smoke.

 

[jwdsail]

Solyndra's Fire Sale! Got plenty of 'em and cheap too!

For the U.S. taxpayer, not so cheap... lotta money gone. Is that why it's called "Green Energy"?
/
/
/

Solyndra, and many small businesses focused on installation that expanded in recent years, then collapsed did not fail due to a failure of technology. They failed due to states defrauding their taxpaying residents out of promised rebates. These people got screwed, then mitched and boned to all their friends and neighbors. Word got out that the states were doing a massive bait-and-switch, spending more on signage promoting their Solar policies than paying promised rebates to their residents, and people stopped buying/installing..

Not rocket surgery... Just more crooked state congress critters screwing over the middle and working class and tossing the blame elsewhere..

 

[jwdsail]

For me it's the cutting down of trees and causing fires large enough that the neighbors are complaining about the smoke. Burning trees, well, removing trees, for a solar farm seems counter productive on some level. Couldn't Apple have installed panels on the roof of this massive building and put the panels on a n angle to be able to install more on it.

Slash and burn is what ticks me off about so many projects. Somehow we need to balance respect for the environment with our quest for energy self sufficiency.

But in the end, who ever called Apple a 'green company'. Look at their history. I don't think they have earned the green label until recently and I'm sure that if you look closely, the green tint wears off quickly.

Sure, they are better than some, but there is room for improvement.

Let's see how they pull off this 'solar farm' and if they can make it and not be creating an eye sore and technical wasteland.

It's highly unlikely that the trees are being burned. Far more likely the underbrush is being burned, to allow vehicles into the area to remove the larger trees. Know what? Any state or county land in the area likely gets the same treatment annually to help prevent large-scale forest/wild-fires... They do it here every year.

 

[Liquorpuki]

Actually I do, but consider it unlikely that Apple cares about the capacity factor as normally defined.

If the goal is merely to offset usage during peak load/cost times, the actual generation during those peak times is what is important - not the generation normalized for a 24 hour day.

I agree but I wasn't responding to that. I was responding to the guys arguing Apple would be able to break even with a feed-in tariff. Only way that would be possible is if they built a solar farm that could cover the load, and only way to do that is by overbuilding to compensate for the crappy capacity factor.

Technically there's nothing else Apple could use that solar farm for except covering a portion of their load. Unless they're trying to pull a Google and get into the energy market.

Also, I'm not sure how a data center works but I'd think the load is fairly constant 24/7. I don't think they start shutting off servers at night the way we turn off everything before we go to sleep.

I'd say batteries for something this scale is highly unlikely..

I'll tell you straight up, not only are they unlikely but grid batteries that can last a day without losing charge currently don't exist.

Given the scale, I think this will be a molten salt solar array, that uses mirrors to direct light to a container that holds salts that heat up to a molten state, then produce steam to turn turbines.. The molten salt could, in some cases, continue to produce power into the night, or over a cloudy/rainy day following a sunny one. This sort of solar energy production is being shown to be much more efficient than PV solar cells.

Unless they plan to build the world's biggest solar farm, Apple is not going to have any leftover electricity that would require a molten salt storage system. That electricity is going directly through a transformer into their data center.

 

[Taz Mangus]

Waste of time and land...

Yes let's discourage the use of our land that is not used to extract oil, natural gas and coal from the ground

Wonder why Apple did not use solar panels on the roof of the data center.

 

[Gasu E.]

I would rather see the land being used as a cutting-edge solar farm than another Walmart or landfill. Especially when it's another project that is defining NC as a technology hub and a place that looks to the future instead of being stuck in the past and hoping things might go back to the industries of old.

I applaud Apple's initiative in getting rid of those unsightly, useless woodlands to build a new energy-generating facility.

 

[mrsir2009]

I think wind mills would be more appropriate? What are they going to do at night? lol

The Data Centre is not going off the grid. The solar farm will merely assist in powering the Data Centre during the day, cutting a huge chunk off it's power bill.

Even if it had windmills it wouldn't be able to go off the grid: What about when there's no or little wind?

----------

Yes let's discourage the use of our land that is not used to extract oil, natural gas and coal from the ground

Wonder why Apple did not use solar panels on the roof of the data center.

Hopefully they'll cover much of the roof in panels as well as the ground to generate even more electricity

 

[globalhemp]

Roof

Why clear land and forest when you have several acres of unused rooftop over the data center?

 

[johncrab]

I just can't help myself. Key words: North Carolina and Solar Farm:

"Hey Cletus. Howz we gonna pick them solars when they is ripe?"

 

[Mad-B-One]

This sounds very interesting. Any links?

This LINK will lead you to a hybrid power plant for wind and hydrogen. That link only contains the announcement in 2009. The plant just opened but I could only find the German news for it under this LINK.

 

[apolloa]

Very good move by Apple, they REALLY REALLY REALLY need to be as green as possible as when you manufacture as much as they do, or build massive power hungry data centres then they must work hard to meet their carbon footprint targets. They should however be helping the factory's of their suppliers to stop poisoning the atmosphere, no one likes buying a product like a computer that helps to kill people!!

meh, I live in a country that sees nuclear as the ONLY way forward even though it has built the worlds largest off shore wind farm, and it also has set in stone that we get lot of gas from Russia in the future, despite the fact it has been confirmed that we have out own supplies in the North sea and under our own land to keep us going to years! But hey, it's politics, power before and ego your own people....

As to the people moaning about Apple destroying 150 acres of trees, a little fact, about one and a half acres of rainforest is destroyed EVERY SECOND!
Partly for many of the items the western world enjoys and consumes daily. In fact in my lifetime it's very possible for the world to not have any rainforest left! That's down from the once 14% of the planets surface they covered, now think how much oxygen all those trees made, 14% of natures natural oxygen generator lost for ever.....

 

[JAT]

My house array has nameplate 8.5 kW rating, and has delivered over 7 kW - in spite of the fact that I have the panels at 5° and 10° tilts rather than optimum.

If I may ask....
Hey, how big is your array? 900sf range? And how would you describe your amount of sunlight over the year? You aren't exactly south, right?

Always shopping...

 

[hchung]

You do realize you can store energy right?

*sigh* So many people missing the point, it's a shame.

AidenShaw and Liquorpuki probably have the most reasonable discussion in here because they're trying to discuss capacity. mrsir2009 seems to be knowledgeable too.

Solar cells have limited efficiency. Solar furnaces have better efficiency.
So yes, if they built solar furnaces and turbines, it'd be "greener" than solar cells. But it'd also mean they'd have to operate this plant with molten salt at 600 degrees C. Apple isn't a power company, so they're back to solar cells.

Yes, we can store energy, but it's a question of flow.

If you spend more energy than you can make, batteries are useless. All storage is useless. Because there's nothing to store. If any of you are gamers interested in RTS games, go play Supreme Commander or Total Annihilation. You'll learn a lot about managing resource flow. Seriously.

The other question is whether or not a solar farm is worth it. Free energy is nice. But solar cells arn't free. Nor are the manufacturing costs to build them. If they were, Solyndra wouldn't be shuttered right now.

I don't know what the breakeven point for energy spent to create versus energy created by a solar cell. But people have to be aware that it's most certainly on the order of years. This also has to be balanced out against the fact that solar cells, despite being inanimate non-mechanical, wear out over time.

I don't care about global warming. I don't care about politics. But I do think that using technology in a way that does less harm to the planet is good. As long as you can make sure it really is doing less harm.

 

[Mad-B-One]

DID ANY ONE BOTHER TO READ THE STORY?

Apple is clear cutting and burning 150+ acres of forest to make room for the solar farm. That doesn't seem very green for me, in fact, all the carbon emissions put out by burning all those trees must be a royal flush down the toilet for any "green" benefits earned by the solar farm...

Apple is a bunch of hypocrites, saying they are going green and then burning an entire forest down, with ZERO consideration for the people who live around the data center who have to breathe in all the smoke.

Sure, it would be better to take some fields and transfer them. Then we import the food we don't produce there from China or South America and send it back as humanitarian aids because they don't have enough food there. BTW: Ever thought what was there before they built the farms, before cities were built? You guessed it: Forests. And in case you go with "Then build it somewhere else: The power grid itself loses about 60% of the power until it gets to where it is needed. Needless to say, moving it across a state would need 3x the space - or forest to provide the equivalent of power.

 

[Fwink!]

Maybe Apple will do it's thing for Solar? I'd like to see all the portables and phones and players having solar self charging, think of the long term benefit there.

 

[Papajohn56]

Yes, harnessing free power from the sun is such a waste of time.

Yes, "Free" power that costs the manufacture of panels, tearing down of the forest, is highly inefficient, and is largely just a token. I don't think you understand what the word "free" means.

 

[headphase]

As said earlier in the thread, a lot of data centers use solar energy since they benefit from the supplemental energy they provide to data centers; which produce a lot of heat by themselves in addition to the heat on warm/hot days. It's not about being green, it's about saving grid energy which costs more.

 

[LwoodPDowd]

satellite pic of location

https://imgur.com/V0GM9

 

[TallManNY]

For 1/4 of the cost of Iraq Wars
100% of US electricity production could have being switched to
alternative energy.

That isn't even close to true. But assuming the cost of the Iraq Wars was $2 trillion, then yes $500 billion could have provided a huge amount of alternative energy sources.

 

[gnasher729]

Also, I'm not sure how a data center works but I'd think the load is fairly constant 24/7. I don't think they start shutting off servers at night the way we turn off everything before we go to sleep.

Any datacentre tries to save as much energy as possible; servers turned on = cost in energy, cost in wear and tear. In a good setup, when the load goes down clock rates will be reduced to save energy, and then servers will be shut down automatically and restarted automatically when needed.

 

[TallManNY]

I don't know what the breakeven point for energy spent to create versus energy created by a solar cell. But people have to be aware that it's most certainly on the order of years. This also has to be balanced out against the fact that solar cells, despite being inanimate non-mechanical, wear out over time.

Lots of good points in your post. But one clarification. Solar cells have passed the breakeven point where the energy to construct them is less, in fact now significantly less, than the energy that they produce over their lifetime. Solar panels have gotten significantly better and cheaper to make in the last ten years. The price per watt of capacity production has decreased by 75% and further drops are anticipated in the near future. Though of course they are still an expensive source of energy compared to an old coal-fired power plant that was built and paid for decades ago.

 

[AidenShaw]

If I may ask....
Hey, how big is your array? 900sf range? And how would you describe your amount of sunlight over the year? You aren't exactly south, right?

Always shopping...

I have 37 SunPower 230 watt panels. It's 46 m², or 495 square feet. They have Enphase micro-inverters (the only way to go - monolithic inverters are crazy when there's an alternative at about the same price).

I'm in Palo Alto, CA - 37°N (Maiden NC is 35° N). We basically have clear skies and no rain from April to November.

The NREL (National Renewable Energy Lab) has a solar calculator at http://www.nrel.gov/rredc/pvwatts/grid.html (click the "•PVWatts Version 2 Calculator" link in the list). I have 8.5 kW rated, 90% efficiency, panels at 10° tilt, oriented at 195°.

The calculator says that I should get 13.56 mWh per year, and in fact I got 13.7 mWh. (I chose a very low 10° tilt to reduce the visibility of the panels and to pack more onto the roof - at a normal tilt I should have generated 14.5 mWh with 37 panels.)

 

[keelio]

Apple requires additional pylons.

 

[apolloa]

Any datacentre tries to save as much energy as possible; servers turned on = cost in energy, cost in wear and tear. In a good setup, when the load goes down clock rates will be reduced to save energy, and then servers will be shut down automatically and restarted automatically when needed.

A data centre only has a few servers though, they have more of I guess storage units? Racks of hard drives for iCloud etc. So once they are all populated with information I guess the energy save comes from the drives not being used unless required?

 

[Dhelsdon]

Apple will find some way to make their solar farm much nicer looking then a typical one.