Google's Wind, Solar Power Investments Top $1B

Lucas123 writes "Google just announced it is investing another $80 million in six new solar power plants in California and Arizona, bringing its total investment in renewable energy to more than $1 billion. The new plants are expected to generate 160MW of electricity, enough to power 17,000 typical U.S. homes. They are expected to be operational by early 2014. With the new plants, Google's renewable power facilities will be able to generate a total of 2 billion watts (gigawatts) of energy, enough to power 500,000 homes or all of the public elementary schools in New York, Oregon, and Wyoming for one year, it said. Currently, Google gets about 20% of its power from renewable energy, but it has set a goal of achieving 100% renewable energy."

Comments

Watt not unit of energy

[HuguesT]

Watt is a unit of power, not energy. So the content is completely impossible to assess. Are we to assume Wh (Watt-hours) instead? 2GWh would be a significant power plant output, the equivalent of a full nuclear power plant, however is this peak capacity? This would be far less impressive as average capacity would be significantly less.

Re:Watt not unit of energy

[Anonymous Coward]

They mean 2000 MW.
A somewhat more direct source.
http://www.google.com/green/bigpicture/references.html

Re:Does this go to those schools?

[sgt scrub]

I was wondering how far down the page I would have to get before someone pointed out what should be obvious. Google's highest cost is energy. Getting into the energy business does two things. First it gives them what the tards a !Yahoo were too stupid to get into, a "brick and mortar" presence so they have a tangible value. Second, it removes the highest negative from their spreadsheet.