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Apple Building Solar Farm In North Carolina
jfruhlinger writes "Apple's North Carolina data center will, it appears, be turning greener: the company is building a dedicated solar farm to power it. That would be a welcome turnaround for proponents of green energy, as Apple was lured to North Carolina in part by the promise of cheap electricity from coal-fired plants."
Yes but it will produce Apple electricity, which will only work with Apple products (such as the "licensed only" chargers for the iPhone). Sure it's possible to adapt the electricity to work with non-Apple products, but then they'll sue you for it.
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Now they are going to claim they invented the sun, and the stupid fucking patent office will grant it to them.
You sure the facts are correct? I am pretty sure Oracle bought Sun, not Apple.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I applaud this move by Apple. I'm a big proponet of solar power. The more companies that integrate solar into their energy needs, the less expensive the technology becomes. It's finally getting to the point where an average homeowner can break even on an investment in solar.
If you made the price one that equaled or exceeded the current monthly/yearly expenditure on electric bills -AND- made the equipment affordable up-front, it would be a win-win.
People are short-sighted these days with the economy being the way it is. They want to save money NOW, as well as save money long-term. Make it happen, that's your challenge.
The amount of incoming solar radiation increases significantly the closer to the equator you are.
I live in Toronto, Canada, and not long ago the provincial government here made a big deal about setting up a solar array here (of course, with a significant govt subsidy).
A critic pointed out how much cheaper it would have been to buy land in Texas, set up a solar array, and send the power back (despite losses in transmission).
But then the govt wouldn't have had the nice photo-op...
The big advantage to green energy is that even if it is a bubble, you still accrue the long term benefits.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Typical high-density data center power consumption: 500w/m^2 for entire building, per floor.
Max solar flux in NC about 1000w/m^2. But only for 6 hours a day on average. At 12% efficiency, that's 30 watts per square meter average. So the solar farm has to be 16x the size of the data center.
We'll be able to see from the aerial photos whether they put in enough panels that it matters.
http://www.window.state.tx.us/specialrpt/energy/subsidies/ ...)
2.8% of energy subsidies go to solar. 20.2 to coal, 25.7 to oil and gas (not counting the war efforts of course
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
If this were Google, they'd be giving away the energy. Well, after they've used it and waited an appropriate amount of time.
Yes, it will be beta juice for years until they get the bugs worked out, at which point everything you plug into it, from your refrigerator to your sump pump, will begin sprouting advertising and will watch your every move.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Construction and implementation+maintenance = loss.
( Making green-friendly people happy = increase in sales ) + ridiculous government subsidies for installing solar = profit increase.
FTFY
( Making green-friendly people happy = increase in sales ) + ridiculous government subsidies for installing solar = profit increase.
"Ridiculous" is just you editorializing. AFAICT the subsidies are working exactly as intended: by encouraging the adoption of solar power, they grow the solar power market, increase the economies of scale for panel production, and bring the prices down quicker so that soon we'll have solar power that's cheap enough that subsidies are no longer necessary.
You may or may not have noticed that solar panel prices decreased by 50% last year, and the market grew by 70%. Coincidence? Perhaps, but I don't think so.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Greenpeace is going to have a shitfit over them using chemicals, and ./ers will claim that Apple will now claim they invented solar power.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
And 3 lines further down on the same page. You get a percentage of the price which is subsidised.
Oil & Gas 0.5%
Coal 6.9%
Solar 12%
As I said. Sans subsidies it takes decades to pay back the capital costs of a solar installation.
Go on, run the figures yourself.
How much does your heat & electricity cost per year?
How much is the capital cost of an installation to satisfy your requirements?
How many years would it take to pay the cost of solar from the difference between the price of grid and the "free" energy?
Not a good investment. Even worse if the money is borrowed to fund the installation.
Deleted
The problem with the article, however, is talking about how dirty electricity is in North Carolina, and citing coal (yes it is, and yes we have them) and nuclear (which is not exactly dirty), but just a couple hours away are major hydro-dams, on High Rock, Tuckertown, Badin (Narrows) and Falls. Most of these were created up to 100 years ago for creating aluminum, which is no longer being manufactured here, so the power goes to the main grid. And hydro is as clean and 'on demand' as you can get. These aren't the only hydro-dams around here even. NC isn't the worst when it comes to pollution from power generation.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Unfortunately, this may be a huge setback for solar power as thousands of Slashdotters are now obligated to hate it because of Apple's move.
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
You get a percentage of the price which is subsidised.
Solar 12%
Then you say:
Sans subsidies it takes decades to pay back the capital costs of a solar installation
But those two don't match up. If 12% of the price is subsidised, then without the subsidy it would cost 14% more. If the break even point is 10 years with the subsidy, then it would be 11.4 years without. For a small-scale home installation, the break even point is closer to seven years without subsidy, for a larger plant it can be anywhere from 2-5 years. Without the subsidy it would be a few months longer, not decades, unless the subsidies are closer to 80% of the price, not the 12% that you claim...
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I didn't take it, because a lot of R&D money is going into panels at the moment. They've gone from about 8% to 12% efficiency for cheap rooftop panels in the last couple of years, and 15% panels are available now. The theoretical peak is somewhere around 40%, and the practical peak before it starts to get really expensive is probably somewhere in the 20-30% range. Given the current rates of development, if I wait about five years then I probably won't get the subsidy (it's slowly being phased out), but I will get twice as much electricity generated for the same investment. Of course, I'd still encourage all of the early adopters to buy now and drive the prices down for me...
That said, I only have a house to power. If I had a large datacenter, then I'd be a lot more tempted. The cost of waiting five years would be a lot more, and I'd probably want to rebuild everything in ten years anyway, so building something that will be obsolete in a decade isn't so important, especially because on such a large scale it's easy to incrementally replace panels as more efficient ones become available and the old ones wear out.
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