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

$80M/17,000

[Anonymous Coward]

$4,700 per house.

115M homes in USA - 115Mx4.7K

$0.54 Trillion dollars to have solar to every US household. We need baseline power, and some areas of the USA would be less effective for solar, but that $0.54T investment ought to cover around 50% of electricity needs in the US. It would also help to usher in the era of electric cars.

Dammit, the cost of Iraq/Afghanistan has been projected at ten times that amount ($6 Trillion). So much for "securing energy supplies".

Re:$80M/17,000

[Joining Yet Again]

That's not how capitalism works at all.

If they have to use 10 times the amount to get just a little bit richer and more powerful - especially if it's your money - you can be damn sure they'll do it.

Re:$80M/17,000

[ShanghaiBill]

Very well, what would your objections be to printing another $0.5T and spending it on solar farms that could provide roughly 50% of the electricity needs of the USA?

If what you said was possible with today's technology (it isn't), then there would be no need to object, because profit seeking capitalists would already be doing it with their own money.

Other news of Solar in Arizona: Taxes

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

While many states offer subsidies for solar, Arizona is starting to tax solar installations

Re:Other news of Solar in Arizona: Taxes

[dkleinsc]

Why yes, where had I read about that?

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:Watt not unit of energy

[ShanghaiBill]

What's with the drama? Electricity generating facilities of all kinds are routinely described in terms of peak capacity.

But a coal or gas plant can maintain that peak almost 24/7. Solar is at peak production for only a few hours per day. So a 1GW solar plant will produce about a quarter of the energy of a 1GW coal plant. Measuring by peak power is silly if you want to be able to do an apples-to-apples comparison.

Re: Peak Capacity

[DanielRavenNest]

Peak capacity is used throughout the electrical industry, from the generators to the nameplates of the devices in your house. The reason is the peak determines the size of the wires - in your walls or for transmission lines - to carry the load safely. For power sources, the other number you care about is "capacity factor", the percentage of peak capacity you can supply on average. It may be 90+% for nuclear (they still shut down for refueling, and sometimes for unplanned maintenance), and lower for other sources. Even hydroelectric has a limit if the water supply is less than peak turbine capacity. Photovoltaic can be as low as 15% in poor locations, while solar-thermal with storage can be much higher.

Less than 100% capacity factor is OK, because no power plant routinely operates at 100% capacity. For one thing, customer demand has daily and seasonal variations. For another, every plant stops for maintenance sometimes. Lastly, each power source has a different marginal operating cost. Hydroelectric, wind, and solar don't burn a fuel, so are relatively cheap per kWh when they run. Coal and natural gas consume fuel, thus have higher marginal cost when they run. A utility operator wants the cheapest mix to satisfy demand at any given time. Since natural gas prices can fluctuate dramatically over the life of a plant, one thing solar does is stabilize their costs. You know for sure that a solar plant will still not be burning fuel at the end of it's life. You have no idea what natural gas will cost in 40 years.

As far as photovoltaic peak production only being part of the day, that is well matched to the US southwest, where the peak air-conditioning demand happens exactly when solar has maximum power. Something like nuclear is better suited to baseload power, the part of demand that is always there. A nuclear reactor is a bitch to turn on and off, so they would rather keep it running all the time between refuelings.

If you are going to discuss power grids, you need to stop using just one performance parameter. That's not how real grids operate.

Does this go to those schools?

[houghi]

Does the energy actually go to those schools, or is it just a nice way to saying it in a marketing wording?

Because what I read is that Google uses enough to power 2.5 million homes. (20% = 500.000 homes) Making the energy themselves is more cost efficient then buying it and green energy is cheaper and/or easier and/or faster to get into then oil or coal.

Basically cutting out the middle man. Has been done by industry for a long time.

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.