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Apple Expanding NC Green Data Center
The North Carolina data center that Apple has touted as especially earth-friendly (for having biogas-fueled generators, for one thing) will soon have a smaller companion; Apple is expanding its presence, according to filings reported over at Slash DataCenter, with another 21,000-plus square foot facility at the same site. "Apple also plans to build a hydrogen fuel-cell facility in the area, at least based on other filed permits. That would complement the solar-array installations under construction. Apple has claimed that some 60 percent of the data center facility’s power will be generated onsite. As it stands now, the Maiden facility already incorporates energy-efficient design elements, including real-time energy monitoring and analytics."
Why don't we just call it the Granny Smith Data Center?
Or the GSDC for short.
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Apple has claimed that some 60 percent of the data center facility’s power will be generated onsite.
So the other 40% will come from FoxConn's Matrix Facility?
It'll be coming from the smog-enshrouded shack out back, surrounded by oil drums labeled "Do NOT open under ANY circumstances!"
Nah, probably just off the grid .. it's not totally green, it's just greenER.
Meanwhile, while noodling around Sonoma County in my greenhouse gas emitting vehicle, I found an entire ranch being powered by 1 wind turbine. Very impressive feat. I wonder if they ship their excess to the grid for a few bucks. Some of these turbines crank out 1.5 megawatts and this one was turning at a pretty fair clip.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Damming rivers is often pretty bad for the surrounding environment. It is in no way 'environmentally friendly.' Cleaner than burning shit sure, but not friendly.
Smash those atoms or GTFO.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
will Apple be gluing the generators to the facility now so that they cannot be easily replaced?
*dons asbestos flame retardant clothing* Well, the Apple fanboys are gonna hate this... I'll be impressed if my reply last 5 minutes before getting modded into oblivion... but the truth is, you're going easy on them.
Don't forget their solution to suiciding workers due to poor working conditions was to install netting outside the buildings... and only started to address poor working conditions at the FoxConn plant after Jon Stewart and a host of other journalists named and shamed their practices. And those poor working conditions included... vats of boiling acid. I'm not shitting you; That's how you etch circuit boards, and they had the most lax safety standards of any factory the independent observers sent in had ever seen. I don't know if anyone actually fell in or anything, but parts of the FoxConn factory resembled James Bond sets. I half expected to see shark tanks and lasers. And this is China we're talking about -- a country that's strip-mining its own resources for exportation in electronics. Bejing, where the factory is, has smog so thick that it can and has killed people who didn't heed the air quality sirens. It's like the smog you see in the opening scenes for the Fifth Element.
Apple isn't green to begin with, and when you look at their business partners, the picture gets even more bleak. But then, what would you expect from a company with the largest market capitalization of any country in the world, and has the largest cash reserves?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
The cleanest, most efficient forms of energy we have today are nuclear and hydroelectric, by far.
Uh no. The cleanest, most efficient forms of energy we have today are solar (preferably combination PV/thermal) and wind, by far.
It's too bad the environmentalist morons who don't actually understand the fucking environment let alone a dam or an atom won't let us use them.
Most of the people behind the environmental movement are a hell of a lot smarter than you are. They understand that dams do damage and that nuclear reactors managed by man and built by either the lowest bidder or the largest provider of pork are inherently unsafe due to human issues.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
To be fair, it turns out that much of the reporting of the "poor working conditions" you refer to was from Mike Daisey, who, as it turns out, just made stuff up because it made a better storyline for his one-man show cf. Slashdot: This American Life Retracts Episode On Apple Factories In China
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a data center on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, lad, the greenest data center in all of North Carolina!