First appeared in Mercury News
San Jose-based SunPower (SPWRA) has landed a plum contract:
Its solar panels will generate electricity for Apple's (AAPL) massive new data
center in Maiden, N.C., according to a filing with regulators in that state.
Apple has said renewable energy--solar panels and fuels
cells--will power a "high percentage" of the data center's overall
electricity needs, leading to speculation in Silicon Valley's clean tech
industry about who its technology partners are.
"Apple is building the nation's largest end user-owned,
onsite solar array on the land surrounding the data center," the company
said in its recently released 7-page facilities report. "When completed,
this 100-acre, 20-megawatt facility will supply 42 million kilowatt-hours of
clean, renewable energy annually."
One megawatt is enough to power 750 to 1,000 homes. But
because the sun doesn't shine all the time, solar industry experts say, 1
megawatt of solar power capacity is sufficient to power about 200 California
households. Solar
Carports can be utilized for these purposes as well.
Apple has not announced which solar company got the contract
and did not respond Tuesday to a request for comment. SunPower declined to
comment, referring calls to Apple.
But an 18-page filing with the North Carolina Utilities
Commission makes it clear that SunPower has been chosen to provide the solar
panels for the massive solar farm.
"Each of the photovoltaic installations will consist of
multiple SunPower E20 435-watt photovoltaic modules on ground-mounted single
axis tracking systems," the filing states.
The solar farm will be built in phases and could begin
delivering electricity to the grid as early as October.
Data centers -- facilities that house massive computer
servers -- gobble up enormous and rapidly growing amounts of electricity. Tech
companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere are taking steps to reduce the
environmental impact of data centers by boosting their energy efficiency. CNC Mills are helpful in the creation
of this technology.
But many data centers are clustered in states that largely
rely on coal and nuclear energy to power the electric grid. Half of the
electricity generated in the United States is from coal, and greenhouse-gas
emissions from coal-fired power plants are a leading cause of climate change.
Tech companies have been under fire from Greenpeace for powering data centers with
what it calls "dirty energy," and the environmental organization has
pressed tech companies to commit to clean, renewable energy sources.
Apple, Facebook and Google (GOOG) have data centers within
45 minutes of each other in western North Carolina. The region, which used to
be a center of textile and furniture manufacturing, now pitches itself as North
Carolina's "Data Center Corridor."
The power in the region comes from Duke Energy, which offers
some of the cheapest electricity in the nation. Duke Energy operates eight
coal-fired power plants, as well as seven nuclear power plants.
Apple's data center is the region's largest. It occupies
500,000 square feet -- the size of nearly five Walmart stores. Apple has not
said what the overall energy needs of the data center are, but Greenpeace
estimates that just 8 to 10 percent of the facility's overall needs would come
from renewables, with the other 90 percent coming from Duke Energy.
"While Apple has been more than happy to draw the
media's attention to how large the solar farm is, it has kept its lips stapled
firmly shut when it comes to just how much coal will still be required to power
the cloud," wrote Gary Cook of Greenpeace in a recent blog post about the
data center.
Apple expects at least 14 photovoltaic installations to make
up the solar farm. Other details, such as projected costs and maps of the
proposed site, are confidential and could not be accessed from the North
Carolina Utilities Commission website. Apple has billions of dollars in cash on
hand and "intends to self-finance this project," according to the
filing.
SunPower designs and manufactures high-efficiency solar
cells and solar panels for residential, commercial and utility clients. Total
SA, the French oil company, purchased a majority stake in SunPower last year.
