Apple and Nevada energy company NV Energy today announced a new agreement that will see the two partnering to build 200 megawatts of additional solar energy in Nevada by 2019, which will support Apple's data center in Reno, Nevada.
NV Energy will soon enter into a power purchase agreement for the solar power plant, and in the future, Apple will dedicate up to five megawatts of power to NV's upcoming subscription solar program.
"Investing in innovative clean energy sources is vital to Apple's commitment to reaching, and maintaining, 100 percent renewable energy across all our operations," said Apple's vice president for environment, policy and social initiatives Lisa Jackson. "Our partnership with NV Energy helps assure our customers their iMessages, FaceTime video chats and Siri inquiries are powered by clean energy, and supports efforts to offer the choice of green energy to Nevada residents and businesses."
Apple has expanded its Reno data center multiple times over the course of the last few years, and is working on a second data center at the same location. Apple's data centers, including the Reno center, are powered by renewable energy, much of which is derived from solar panel farms located nearby the centers.
Apple started building a Reno solar farm back in 2013, and will now expand on it.
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I can't speak for the US energy grid but other countries are developing batteries in the 200MW range to address the future issue of supply peaks failing to meet demand peaks.
Anyway, this is very good news. Especially when others are taking the concept of a huge pipeline rather more literally than Apple do...
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3147845/sustainable-it/china-leads-the-world-in-solar-power-installations.html ('http://www.computerworld.com/article/3147845/sustainable-it/china-leads-the-world-in-solar-power-installations.html')
That's true. Solar, along with storage technologies, helps with this by flattening out the peaks and troughs in demand across the day. That means less need to start and stop gas peaker plants and less need to keep plants idling as spinning reserve, which can be expensive and wasteful.
Nonsense. The daily energy demand for the entire USA could be supplied by about 11 million acres of solar panels. That's equivalent to a small corner of Nevada, which has plenty of sunny empty desert available!
In fact, a small section of the Sahara desert could power the entire planet's energy demand.
Obviously we don't yet have the ability to store and transmit it efficiently/cheaply enough for 100% solar to be a reality, but the point is that the amount of potential energy available via solar is enormous.
Nuclear energy is certainly less dangerous than highly polluting alternatives like coal, but it is very expensive. Nobody would be bothering much with solar, gas, or coal if nuclear was cheap and easy. Unfortunately it's not.