Apple to use only inexperienced power for main knowledge center

Apple to use only inexperienced power for main knowledge center | Apple Inc plans to power its main U.S. knowledge center entirely with renewable energy by the end of this year, taking steps to handle longstanding environmental issues concerning the speedy growth of high-consuming laptop server farms.

The maker of the iPhone and iPad said on Thursday it absolutely was shopping for equipment from SunPower Corp and startup Bloom Energy to make two solar array installations in and around Maiden,Apple to use only inexperienced power for main knowledge center  North Carolina, near its core knowledge center.

Once up, the solar farm will provide 84 million kWh of energy annually. The sites will employ high-efficiency solar cells and a sophisticated solar tracking system.

The two solar farms will cover 250 acres, Apple to use only inexperienced power for main knowledge center among the most important in the business, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer told Reuters. Apple plans on using coal-free electricity in all three of its knowledge centers, with the Maiden facility coal-free by the end of 2012.

"I'm not responsive to the other company producing energy onsite at this scale," Oppenheimer said during a telephone interview.

"The plan we have a tendency to are releasing nowadays includes two solar farms and along they will be twice as big as we have a tendency to previously announced, thanks to the purchase of some land terribly around the information center in Maiden, which will facilitate us meet this goal."

Shares in SunPower leaped quite ten p.c to shut at $5.59 on Thursday, and tacked on a 6-cent after-hours trading gain on top of that.

Concerns concerning the ever-expanding power consumption of laptop knowledge centers have mounted in recent years, as technology giants build enormous facilities housing servers to cater to an explosion in web traffic, multimedia use and enterprise services hosting, via cloud computing.

"Our next facility are in Prineville, Oregon. this is often still in the planning stages and we have already identified many renewable sources nearby," Oppenheimer said.

"We haven't finalized our plans for on-site generation, however any power we need to run our center in Prineville that we have a tendency to get from the grid are one hundred pc renewable and domestically generated sources," the Apple CFO said.

SWITCHING TACK

SunPower, now majority-owned by France's Total SA , makes the foremost economical solar panels in the world, according to business analysts.

Apple to use only inexperienced power for main knowledge center Prices for solar panels - notably at large-scale solar plants just like the one Apple envisions - are dropping rapidly, narrowing the gap with the price of fossil fuel power. Analysts say that may encourage some firms to change.

"SunPower will take a bite out of Apple's environmental impact with our highest potency solar at their North Carolina knowledge center, the nation's largest privately-owned solar array," SunPower CEO Tom Werner said via email.

Several activist groups have expressed their issues over the use of "dirty" power by Apple's knowledge centers, that support its web storage and service-hosting service iCloud. several members of Greenpeace staged a protest in the week at Apple's Cupertino campus using a big "iPod."Apple to use only inexperienced power for main knowledge center.

Greenpeace, that has additionally targeted Amazon.com and Microsoft with clean energy campaigns, saluted Apple's call.

"Apple's announcement nowadays could be a nice sign that Apple is taking seriously the hundreds of thousands of its customers who have asked for an iCloud powered by clean energy, not dirty coal," Greenpeace International Senior IT Analyst Gary Cook said during a statement.