Apple building 171 acre solar panel farm to power NC data center

[DainBramaged]

Apple has apparently begun the early stages of construction for a planned 171 acre solar panel farm across the street from its $1 billion data center located in Maiden, North Carolina. According to permits filed with Catawba County, the land is already being reworked under strict erosion control ordinances for what Apple is calling "Project Dolphin Solar Farm A Expanded." Project Dolphin is Apple's code name for its North Carolina data center.

Apple's huge data center came online in the spring of 2011 in order to power the company's iCloud and iTunes Store cloud services. The 500,000 square foot facility—described as "big-ass" by one data center expert—requires massive amounts of electricity to power and cool its racks of servers and storage arrays. Steve Jobs called the building "as eco-friendly as you can make a modern data center," thanks in no small part to its designer, the late data center efficiency expert Olivier Sanche. Despite this, Greenpeace criticized the fact that the area of North Carolina where it is located has one of the "dirtiest generation mixes in the US," a combination of coal and nuclear power.

A large solar array should help offset the reliance on coal-powered electricity from the local grid. Apple has noted in the past that its Cork, Ireland, and Elk Grove, California facilities both run on 100 percent renewable energy. The company's Austin, Texas offices use some renewable energy sources as well. The solar array appears to be part of Apple's overall commitment to making its operations as green as possible.

No details about the planned solar panel array or its potential power output are known at this time, but the Charlotte Observer noted that more details will likely become publicly available when Apple files for a building permit, according to Catawba County engineer Toni Norton.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/10/apple-building-171-acre-solar-panel-farm-to-power-nc-data-center.ars

[banned from Kos]

1. I once heard the futurist Ray Kurtzweil (sp?) claim a 100 sq mile solar farm

in the desert could provide 100% of the USA's power needs.

[Xithras]

2. Yes and no.

There are only a few places in the U.S. that you could place a plant like that, and line losses would prevent you from distributing that power throughout the United States. You're also talking about effectively nuking 100 square miles of endangered desert habitat, which just might piss a few people off.

On top of that, you'll need some major energy storage solutions. The simplest generally involve pumping vast amounts of water into new reservoirs, where they can be drained for hydroelectric generation later. These will be needed to provide power at night, and through the winter months when solar radiation levels are lower and power output falls.

His claim is correct only in that, at peak, 100 sq miles of solar panels can meet Americas needs. Practically speaking, we'd probably need double that, and would need to submerge thousands of additional square miles of land as temporary energy storage sites.

[Tesha]

4. Line losses would *NOT* be prohibitive.

Megavolt-class HVDC lines routinely wheel power a
thousand miles today; the distances wouldn't be much
longer.

Tesha

[Xithras]

6. But they would be, due to solar intensity limiting possible build locations.

"Megavolt-class HVDC lines routinely wheel power a thousand miles today;"

The United States is 2100 miles wide at its narrowest point and 3400 miles wide at its widest. More importantly, there is only one place in the United States with sufficient solar radiation to built a plant like the one discussed above, and that's the Arizona/Utah/New Mexico desert. Unless there have been some fairly significant technological breakthroughs recently, there's no efficient way to move that electricity from the southwestern deserts to the U.S. northeast, which has the highest regional population density in the country. You're talking about a 2000 mile jump.

[Tesha]

7. So your argument is that 1,000 miles is perfectly okay but 2000 miles...

...is totally infeasible?

Sorry, it doesn't work like that.

Tesha

[Xithras]

8. Uhm, actually

UHV DC lines max out at about 1200 miles currently, so even at 1,000 miles you're losing a lot of power to resistance. You CAN throw power that far, but it's not all that efficient. China has several major UHV projects underway that will be moving power nearly that far, and they have to run the equivalent of several extra coal plants to counter the systems inefficiency. It works, but it's not the friendliest system on the planet.

Nobody has yet managed to move power 2000 miles. I'm sure people could figure out how to do it (it's really just a matter of scaling), but you're still faced with the efficiency problems. You'll be destroying a LOT of desert installing solar panels whose ONLY goal will be to provide enough power to counter the inefficiencies of the long distance transmission.

[Tesha]

9. Ohm's Law scales linearly.

If an HVDC line "tops out" at 1200 miles as you
say, then two HVDC lines running in parallel "top
out" with the exact same losses at 2400 miles;
problem solved, let's get building!

But I realize it's economically-necessary for some
constituencies to talk down renewable energy.

Tesha

[Xithras]

10. To be honest.

My interest has nothing to do with talking down renewable energy, and everything to do with stopping environmentally ignorant easterners from permanently fucking up our beautiful western deserts. Contrary to what many on the east coast seem to think, those deserts aren't "wastelands" waiting to be exploited. They are stunningly beautiful and fragile landscapes filled with all sorts of rare and endangered wildlife. Large scale industrial power stations, especially on the scale discussed in the OP, have no business in those deserts.

Renewable energy is great, but build it in your backyard, not mine.

[AndyTiedye]

5. Put the Panels on the Roof, Over Parking Lots, etc.

Solve the distribution problem by distributing the panels themselves.
Put them on rooftops, over parking lots, that sort of thing.

No need to lay waste to endangered desert habitat, put the panels
in the cities where the demand is.

Especially cities that are already IN the desert.

[DainBramaged]

3. Maybe in 1950