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Apple's North Carolina Data Center Will Feature Biogas Generators
1sockchuck writes "Apple's North Carolina data center will tap landfills for biogas, which will then be converted into electricity using fuel cells from Bloom Energy. The 24 'Bloom boxes' will have a capacity of 4.8 megawatts of power, and along with a large solar array, will provide Apple with a significant on-site generation of sustainable energy. Microsoft is also developing biogas-powered data plants where modular data centers will be housed near water treatment plants and landfills. GigaOm has a useful primer on biogas in data centers, as well as video of the new higher capacity Bloom boxes that will support Apple's server farm."
Anybody seen the insides of a Bloom box?
Each standard def movie is around a gig of data. High def can be several times that. Add up music and apps and you might be shocked how much data Apple transports through their data centers. On top of that there's the OS and other Apple software from their non handheld app store. There is also their on line storage of data and other services. The Apple data centers transfer massive amounts of data so using renewable sources is a very good thing. Most of Amazon's business is physical not digital where as iTunes is all digital. Google is pure on-line so they eat a lot of bandwidth. I say good for Apple for trying to offset energy usage with more sustainable sources.
Gore is an Apple board member and a partner of Bloom Energy owner Kleiner Perkins.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
I thought "biogas" referred to bovine flatulence.
A bit pedantic, but cows mostly belch gas rather than fart - so do make sure you connect the pipe to the right end.
You do realise that the iTunes music store is the largest online music and video retailer in the world (yes, bigger than Amazon); and the iTunes app store isn't the largest online app store right?
And that's completely ignoring the fact that they have an enormous cloud operation syncing iDevices and Macs constantly.
Dude -- think for a few more seconds.
1. They are almost certainly connected to the grid. Just like residential solar cells, a building can be BOTH connected to the grid AND have on-site renewable generation.
2. Apple is paying the industrial retail rate for electricity, not the cost the utility would pay. Sure, PV and biogas might not be purely economic for the utility in 2012, but they may well be for Apple because Apple's avoided cost is so much higher than the utility's.
3. North Carolina has an RPS -- a Renewable Portfolio Standard. Most states do. The utilities are required to purchase enough certificates so that X% of their retail sales have accompanying certificates, each of which represents 1 MWh of renewably-produced electricity. Apple's equipment will generate these, and Apple will sell them on the market to the utilities, generating even more revenue.
4. Low power lighting and better cooling tech are not mutually exclusive to renewable energy. You can bet that Apple is *also* employing technology which lowers their consumption of electricity for both lighting and cooling.
Apple isn't getting rich on this stuff. They're not getting rich on the vending machines in the break rooms either. It doesn't mean that they're relying on them for critical business purposes, and it doesn't mean they're taking a loss on them. In fact, it's almost certainly the contrary -- this will in no way reduce their data center reliability, and it will result in slightly lower costs than just relying on grid electricity.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
First of all, enjoy a good chuckle at the term 'Biogas'. Most literature refers to it as 'Landfill gas' and the majority of landfill locations think of it as a waste product to be disposed of as cheaply as possible, mostly through flaring operations. The term 'Biogas' was invented by someone that that wanted to game California's renewable energy programs.
As a fuel, it's marginal, having about 500 BTU per standard cubic foot of gas. Most sources are 10% nitrogen, 40% CO2, 45% methane and the balance oxygen, H2S, water, ethane, ect. The energy cost to clean the gas up to the point where something as high tech as a Bloom Box can use it can reach 60% of the energy of the entire gas stream, as water and CO2 removal are both energy expensive operations.
Still, with all it's disadvantages, I hope Apple is able to make the system work reliably, if only because it's a hard engineering problem they are tackling. And it will be a good proof-of-practicality for the Bloom Boxes.