Apple Promises 100 Percent Green Data Center
Apple may be targeted by Greenpeace for using dirty coal to power its iCloud, but the company promises that it will soon be operating a new data center in Prineville, Oregon which will be running on 100 percent renewable energy.
Apparently, construction on a 10,000 sq. ft. "modular" facility has begun already, but the company is planning to add much bigger buildings on the 160-acre parcel in the near future. While not confirmed, the renewable energy source for the data center appears to be solar power. Apple is already building a somewhat-green data center in Maiden, North Carolina which will get about 60 percent of its power from a huge solar panel array.
Greenpeace recently claimed that Apple powers its Maiden plant with electricity drawn from coal-powered power plants. Apple, however, stated that Greenpeace got its facts wrong. Greenpeace estimates that Apple's data center power usage at 100 Mwatts, while Apple claims it is only consuming 20 Mwatts. 7 Mwatts come from solar panels and 5 Mwatts from biogas-powered fuel cells, leaving 8 Mwatts to coal power.
Next it will be the toilet police saying they don't use 100% recycled shit paper!
When talked about green, the data center itself uses thousands of computer which produced in a factory that produces tons of toxic waste. If it is talking about the energy. The solar panel produced in the same way as micro chip. Wind Turbine produced using rare earth material. Not to mention about nuclear energy. Geothermo energy maybe?
Anyway, this is not the fault of Apple, a data center is setup because there is a demand. And the one who demand for it are..... You and Me.
This building is gonna have solar lighting, skylights and everything....
So...
On a cloudy day you are SOL... can't see, can't work, computers won't start, no coffee from the coffee makers... etc etc etc....
>_>
Oh, and by the way... air pollution in the US is at an all time low, lower than back in the 50's and that is according to the ***EPA*** on its LAST air pollution measurement back in 2008... but guess what?
There hasn't been a measurement since, at least the information hasn't been released to the public........
google is your friend....
Dr. Hubbert predicted America would run out of oil by 2010. He was right, but the reason we lasted this long is because we started importing oil and because we started raising the price of oil. In 2008, oil prices were at record high which saw the growth rate drop to -5%. Currently, the annual growth rate of oil consumption is at +2%. If we continue this trend. Not only will America run out of oil, the entire world's reserve of oil will disappear by 2050.
We don't have much time and need to find a new source of energy. Oil and coal are the biggest sources of energy right now in the world, and it will be depleted before our life time is over. Green is the way to go.. at least until we find a new source of energy.
We may not have a lot of oil, but we have something like 8x the amount of coal as the rest of the world combined. You can use coal for power plants, or turn it into oil. We are not running out of power resources any time soon. We have enough resources to power the world for well over 100 years at current growth rates, and as things move to solar and fuel cell tech (because geo thermal and wind power are just bad jokes), we hopefully will not need to resort to that.
At any rate, anyone else think it interesting that apple tells its own customers that they do not know how to hold their phones right, but then pander to greenpeace? And my pander I mean acknowledge that these morons exist in the first place!
I'm not a solar cell expert by no means, but I would think the solar panels would charge large UPSs that they would draw power from, and not directly from the cells. So on a rainy day, they could run off the UPSs for an extended period of time without worry.
Then again, their engineers could be retards for all I know. /shrug
LFTR Thorium reactors have been possible since they were invented at Oak Ridge in the 1950's, but no-one has picked them up, apart from the Chinese who are pushing it as the big power system of the future.
Renewables suck ass, America needs to wake up and invest in Thorium reactors
So, which would you like them to do?
BTW- the article quotes 7MW solar, and as far as I can tell, that would cost around $25-35M, not billions. they have almost $100B if they spend $25-35M on this solar array is like your average Joe with $20k in the bank spending $4-5 vs $0.75 to get a CFL rather than an incandescent bulb.
My only point was that Apple refuses to fix the terrible conditions with it's manufacturing facilities in China, yet has no problem spending all kinds of money on pleasing Green Peace. Basically what this says to me is that Apple cares more about the environment than human life.
In the end it's all a political game and Apple has already sent a strong message that it doesn't give a shit about it's Chinese workers.