Comments on: Apple reveals big solar, fuel cell plans for data center

By: Mark Goodson

Mark Goodson — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 10:18:09 +0000

Very nice post as it provides so much information and really going to help for Commercial electricity prices in daily life.Thanks for such a wonderful post.

By: Mark Goodson

Mark Goodson — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 10:15:49 +0000

Very nice post as it provides so much information on Cheapest Electricity Rates and really going to help in daily life.Thanks for such a wonderful post.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 00:52:52 +0000

I don’t see why you would want to concentrate your data centers in zone 4 earthquake zone. California and most of Oregon are zone 4 while North Carolina is seismically a zone 1, maybe zone 2 A which makes it pretty inactive. Companies use a variety of factors to locate critical data centers including cost and stability of power (remember data centers are huge power users), number of fiber providers for redundancy, risk (stay away from earthquake zones where possible, build out of flood planes or elevate to worst case scenarios), latency if its an issue and yes tax breaks.

By: John Wagner

John Wagner — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 19:03:38 +0000

Please refer to other article’s comments for more details…

http://gigaom.com/cleantech/5-reasons-why-apple-is-embracing-clean-power-for-its-data-center/

By: John Wagner

John Wagner — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:10:46 +0000

“Many organizations see an ROI on solar of 4-5 years.”

This is completely and totally untrue. This has never happened, not once. ROI is infinity, primarily because the panels only last 30 years at a maximum. Otherwise the ROI tends to range between 80-120 years.

This is simple stuff.

By: John Wagner

John Wagner — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:05:04 +0000

See above post as to the issue of cost effectiveness.

As to the oil subsidies… I had read $5 billion in subsidies. I have never heard $80 billion per year. Sounds made up.

Also, those companies’ products have punitive taxes on top of regular sales tax that more that equal the amount they’re subsidized. (gas at the pump tax of an average of $0.40-$0.50 per gallon, and gobs of excise taxes on coal energy. These far far outweigh the amount of the subsidies.

By: John Wagner

John Wagner — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:57:50 +0000

Louis,
Capacity factor has nothing to do with sunlight to electricity conversion efficiency. The rated power output of the panels already takes that into account. In the realm of PVs, capacity factor (assuming ideal panels, in ideal conditions) is a direct and exclusive function of sunlight hours per day. At the 4.9 hours of sun per day:
4.9hrs/24hrs =~20% capacity factor.
That figure is the ideal capacity factor for the location of these panels. Once you factor in the power conversion efficiency degradation of the panels over time, and other imperfections in the real world, the realistic lifetime capacity factor of the panels is around 10-12%.

You can calculate the average yearly yield of this installation as follows;
20,000 kW (capacity) * 24 hrs * 365 days * 0.12 (capacity factor) =~ 21 million kW-hrs of yearly electricity production.

Again, capacity factor has NOTHING to do with electricity conversion efficiency, only sunlight hours per day, assuming all other conditions are ideal (not possible).

Finally, you seem to be confused about orders of magnitude. The 83MWh you posted is only about $4,000 in electricity per year.
I said that the yearly production would be 17.5 million kWh, or 17,500MWh.
Please, in the future try to be more precise.

By: Louis

Louis — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 16:16:49 +0000

PV system ratings (i.e. 20MW) already factor the sunlight to electricity conversion efficiency. At 4.9 hours of full sun per day in Charlotte NC (yearly average), with realistic losses, production will be about 83MWh, not 17.5. Yearly production at $0.12 would be about $10 million. With incentives and accelerated depreciation, Apple’s ROI can still be near 5 years. So they’re not exactly throwing money out the window to be green here.

By: Louis

Louis — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:41:44 +0000

John,
If your comment on the cost of solar was meant in the abstract, please don’t forget that as a country, we’re heavily subsidizing oil and coal industries (example: $80 billion each year in oil exploration tax breaks, just at the federal level). And if you factor-in the environmental (pollution) costs and public health costs that the oil and coal industries are not being charged for, solar and wind are a huge bargain.
In the specific, for an organization looking at concrete energy options, solar is already cost-effective in many areas, especially where incentives are offered to level the playing field (wrt oil and coal subsidies), or where time-of-use metering is used, etc. Many organizations see an ROI on solar of 4-5 years. If you combine that with solar’s energy cost escalation protection, the effective ROI gets closer to what organizations are looking for.
Compared to developing countries that are now building their infrastructure, the US has the disadvantage of having a large legacy infrastructure, so we can’t just scrap all power sources overnight and start over. But when a company builds a new data center, it’s refreshing to see that their decision makers are coming to the same conclusions that China and others are coming to: we’d be crazy to stubbornly stick to medieval energy sources.

By: John Wagner

John Wagner — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 12:13:49 +0000

“It also has some of the cheapest power, which is likely why Apple decided to build its data center there.”

If Apple was after cheap power, they would have stayed as far away from PV solar as possible. PV solar is absolutely, by far THE most expensive form of electricity generation.