The 500,000-square-foot center will draw about 20 megawatts of power at full capacity, the company says in a post on its website, and produce 60 percent of it onsite. Apple says it will directly buy the other 40 percent from local and regional renewable-energy sources.
Greenpeace has pressured Apple for months over use of coal by Duke Energy, which serves the area, and more recently the use of diesel-powered backup generators.
The N.C. Utilities Commission on Thursday granted a permit for a 20-megawatt solar farm in Maiden. Apple now says it will build a second farm a few miles away.
Apple is also seeking state approval of a 4.8-megawatt fuel cell installation in Maiden that it says will be the nation's largest non-utility project. That project is still before the N.C. commission.
Together, Apple says, the projects will produce 124 million kilowatt-hours of energy, enough to supply 10,874 homes. The actual output will be registered with North Carolina's Renewable Energy Tracking System set up by the utilities commission.
The LEED Platinum-certified Maiden data center, it says, features an array of energy-saving technologies.
Apple says it runs its facilities in Austin, Sacramento, Cork, Ireland and Munich wholly on renewable energy. Its Cupertino, Calif., headquarters now gets more than half its energy from renewable sources including fuel cells.
Photo: Activists stopped a coal train en route to Duke Energy's Marshall coal plant May 3, 2012 and branded it with the Apple logo. The activists contended that coal would be used to power Apple's Maiden, NC data center, currently under construction. Photo by Greenpeace
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6 comments:
I appreciate the links, Bruce.
I hope that is true, but will believe this when I see it.
All green would require that the building didnt take up such a large footprint. All green would require the ability to access the facility without an automobile. All green would mean that all waste in the building would have the capacity to be recycled. LEED is slowly turning into a joke.
I certainly hope this succeeds. I mean, why wouldn't NC want to approve stuff like this?
Apple says it will directly buy the other 40 percent from local and regional renewable-energy sources.
So that 40 percent will be replaced with what? It currently is being used by someone else.
Sort of like the Czech Republic closing down a couple of coal powered electric plants and replaced them with a nuclear reactor. They sold the carbon credits from the closing of the plant to China that built a new coal powered plant. No less coal was being used.
informative article, thank you.
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