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Apple Building Solar Farm at North Carolina Data Center

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I always knew apple has a sunny disposition. This should shine a positive light on things. Perhaps a ray of hope. This company shows flare! I'm beaming with excitement.
 
macingman said:
They said power part of the data centre meaning that solar electricity will be able to contribute to part of the power. Solar electricity will be to unreliable to use for all the power as no sun equals no power.
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As the other guy said, batteries. This is typical. Or were you trying to imply that any situation sans 24-7 sunshine is a failure?

The sun goes down even on hardcore, government funded solar power projects in the middle of deserts. Or at least, that is what I've been led to believe. >_>
 
Kudos, Apple. I would expect no less from a company that has Al Gore sitting on its Board of Directors. Apple leads, others follow.
 
TMar said:
Inefficiently harnessing power from the sun at a premium infrastructure cost, yeah waste of time and money and real estate.
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Apple obviously don't think so - they don't do anything randomly or spontaneously - everything is considered and thought out. This is the company that won't put Flash into iOS, but they'll do solar power for their massive data center. Obviously solar's more worthwhile to them than Flash.

Free energy just waiting to be collected. Imagine that: a company that doesn't want to be yet another scar on the world, acting as yet another drain on our resources, maybe lessen the load a bit. It'll also create more jobs, both initially and ongoing. Good on 'em.

Besides which, what do you care? If Apple thinks it's worthwhile to spend their money on solar, why do you care, any more than I should lecture you about buying an extra power adapter, iPod cable or notebook battery? You want to spend your money? Go for it. Ditto Apple.
 
tMar is trolling you, guys, you fell for it so easily :/

On topic, I'm happy apple is deciding to do this. Kind of surprising they didn't do it a few years back, tbh, but it's a nice change.
 
SirOmega said:
Large scale solar power plants are viable. There is one out at Nellis AFB in Nevada that is 14MW. 170 acres of land would probably get Apple 21MW of solar panels at current densities.

But they should put solar panels on the roof first, its always better to use the roof of an existing structure than to modify land and build a greenfield solar power plant.
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Yeah, I don't understand the hate on here. Utility scale solar plants are ramping up worldwide. The US is a little slower adopting this than some other developed countries. Makes perfect sense for the long haul and to also produce a backup source of power generation in the event that Duke Energy fails.

Although I'm also curious why they didn't start installation on their huge rooftop space first ...
 
TMar said:
Waste of time and land...
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You'd rather it being powered by dirty sources of energy?

It's good to see Apple use solar power. I don't see how using free energy is a waste of time and energy considering you'd burn coal instead and put out more CO2 in the atmosphere.
 
ArcaneDevice said:
Waste of money? You are talking about a company that has billions of cash to spend and builds spaceship buildings and stores made completely out of glass and not just regular glass but ultra-expensive panels that have to be specially made.

Are you complaining that they could be using just regular bricks for those too because it would save them all that money they could have just sitting around doing nothing?

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.
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Agreed ^^^ :apple:
 
Well, this is pretty cool.

And to all of you saying it's a waste of time or money or space... do you have a better idea? What's your big contribution to the world? Would you rather put a big 'ol coal burning power plant there? That's more efficient that solar, since some of you are concerned about the inefficiencies of solar panels.

New technology is never perfect. But we have to use and improve it to get anywhere.

And anybody who's actually investigated the science of our world will realize that our environment (which is not a buzzword, but refers to the actual world we have to live in and depend on) is totally screwed. And it's not getting much better any time soon. Bury your head in the sand all you want. As time goes by and you get older, our world will fall into greater and greater hardship and chaos.

So let's grumble about Apple doing something green. That's productive.
 
New "Green" initiative???

So let me get this straight... the new "Green" thing to do is to mow down 170 acres of trees and pasture land to put up a Solar Farm?
 
Gotta Love Real Estate

Anyone know what Apple paid to assemble those parcels? Someone probably got a nice 10x premium on some otherwise fairly unattractive land in the middle of nowhere. Only takes one sweet deal like that to set your self up for life...and I'm still lookin for mine ;)
 
sigma8 said:
As the other guy said, batteries. This is typical. Or were you trying to imply that any situation sans 24-7 sunshine is a failure?
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Batteries don't store electricity all that efficiently. The most efficient thing to do would be to put any surplus on the grid when the sun is shining, and draw from the grid when it isn't. Batteries make sense only when you're not connected to the grid at all.
 
This is Apple. They aren't going to commit so much resources to something unless they had already done their homework and concluded there are much benefits to be reaped from such a course of action.

So no point saying it is going to be a waste of time and money. :p
 
sigma8 said:
The sun goes down even on hardcore, government funded solar power projects in the middle of deserts. Or at least, that is what I've been led to believe. >_>
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Yes it does. A few hours every day. We call it night time.
 
From what I've learned as an architecture student taking environmental control systems classes, the initial startup is high, but solar does pay back in the long run and is pretty effective provided it's oriented correctly to take advantage of summer sun and winter sun. We recently had an entry in the solar decathlon in DC and our house was able to cut energy consumption by 80 percent just through the use of solar. Passive design allowed for further savings.
 
This is a marketing thing and nothing more. Solar power is clean, but the stuff you have to build to collect it is not. Just like batteries, it is extremely damaging on the environment. Plus you destroy large areas of vegetation, that produced oxygen and captured CO2. It would have been better if they planted a forest and invested a couple of their billions in a nuclear power plant, which is what humanity is going to have to rely on in the next few decades until we can achieve nuclear fusion.
 
lukarak said:
This is a marketing thing and nothing more. Solar power is clean, but the stuff you have to build to collect it is not. Just like batteries, it is extremely damaging on the environment. Plus you destroy large areas of vegetation, that produced oxygen and captured CO2. It would have been better if they planted a forest and invested a couple of their billions in a nuclear power plant, which is what humanity is going to have to rely on in the next few decades until we can achieve nuclear fusion.
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A nuclear plant? Yeah, I'm sure that will go over well. PR nightmare.
 
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