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Google Campus to Become Solar-powered
prostoalex writes "Reuters is reporting that Google is equipping its headquarters with a solar panel 'capable of generating 1.6 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power 1,000 California homes.' This will make Google's Mountain View campus the largest solar-powered office complex in the United States."
"A Google executive said the company will rely on solar power to supply nearly a third of the electricity consumed by office workers at its roughly one-million-square-foot headquarters. This does not include power consumed by data centers that power many of Google's Web services worldwide, he said."
That's great, I am really proud of them for using an alternative energy source (especially in such a sunny area) but most of their energy usage is those data centers and servers, not their employees. They purposefully did not give a % of total energy saved because it probably would have been on the order of 0.1-5%, which would have revealed the ridiculous amount of energy they actually use.
Nike doesn't often get good press, but they recently build a windfarm in Lakdaal, Belgium, where they have their main European distribution center. The windfarm provides 100% of the power needs of the facility, in addition to the power needs of some 8000 households.
I'm sure google will share/sell what they don't use.
The energy payback on a monocrystalline panel is around 6 years. It's a long standing myth that a solar panel takes more energy to make than it generates.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
There still seems to be a popular belief that PV systems cannot 'pay back' their energy investment. The data from recent studies show however that although for present-day systems the EPBT can still be high, it is generally well below the expected life time of a PV system
Han-Wen Nienhuys -- LilyPond