Last year, Facebook was scrutinized by its users for using coal to supply the energy for its massive data centers. The company responded by reminding the public that power for its newest data center would come from multiple sources, including renewables, and would be one of the most energy efficient in the world.
IBM is bringing electric power–in the form of solar panels–to data centers with trouble getting power in the first place.
The company tomorrow will detail a pilot project that couples solar power with water-cooled servers that run on high-voltage direct current. The method results in about a 10 percent energy savings by reducing the losses that normally happen in converting from alternating power from the grid to the direct current servers run on, according to Kota Murali, the chief scientist of nanotechnology at IBM India who developed the pilot as a side project.
That level of energy reduction is significant for large data centers with many servers, but the implications of solar and servers are potentially profound for places that don’t have access to reliable power, Murali said.
Lanco Solar CEO V. Saibaba has stated that he thinks solar power costs in India could come down 40% by 2015, which would make solar cost-competitive with other energy sources even without subsidies correcting for the social costs of dirty energy.
Due to the growing solar market for solar and technological development, the rupee per kilowatt price of solar is projected to drop from 11-12 to 7-8. ”The most important thing is the economics of scale are coming,” Saibaba told Reuters on the sidelines of a solar industry conference. “In the next three to four years, I see the solar power costs coming down to 7 to 8 rupees a unit.”
India, one of the world’s largest polluters (in total, not per capita or per GDP), has a plan to invest $70 billion in solar by 2022, reaching 1,300 MW by 2013 and 20,000 MW by 2022.
Apple plans to build a solar farm next to its massive data center in Maiden, N.C., according to a Charlotte Observer report.
The company has won approval to reshape the slope of 171 acres of vacant land it owns adjacent to the data center in preparation for a data center, according to permits issued in Catawba County. However, the permit offered no details about the solar farm project itself–dubbed Project Dolphin Solar Farm– including its size, the newspaper noted.
What if the U.S. could get 20 percent of its power from solar near transmission lines without covering virgin desert?
It could. Transmission right-of-way corridors, vast swaths of vegetation-free landscape to protect high-voltage power lines, could provide enough space for over 600,000 megawatts of solar PV. These arrays could provide enough electricity to meet 20 percent of the country’s electric needs. (Note: There may not be good interconnection opportunities for solar under these huge towers, so this should be read as a land use discussion rather than technical analysis of interconnection to the grid.)
Saudi Arabia inaugurated its first solar power plant on 1 October as it continues to diversify its energy sources. The 500 kW plant, located on Farasan Island, will save the equivalent of transferring 28,000 barrels of diesel fuel to the island annually.
The plant was constructed by the Saudi Electricity Company (SEC) and Showa Shell Sekiyu K.K., a Japanese energy company partly owned by the Saudi Arabian Oil Company.
King Juan Carlos of Spain and Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, crown prince of Abu Dhabi, along with Masdar CEO Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Sener President Jorge Sendagorta, and several other royals from the United Arab Emirates, oversaw opening ceremonies at a 19.9-megawatt solar plant in Fuentes, Andalucía, Spain.
The plant, which uses molten salt thermal storage to generate electricity, is the result of Torresol Energy, a joint venture backed by Spanish engineering firm Sener and the Abu Dhabi’s energy company Masdar.
The largest High Concentration Photovoltaic (HCPV) project in the world is being funded by the DOE with a $90 million loan guarantee for the Cogentrix Alamosa Solar Generating Project. The first 20 years of the electricity it will generate has already been bought under a PPA (power purchase agreement) by the Public Service Company of Colorado. More than 80 percent of its components will be sourced from the United States.
HCPV is new form of utility-scale solar that has barely been developed, but it has great potential because it has almost twice the efficiency of regular solar PV. Cogentrix HCPV is rated at 40% efficient. By comparison, most coal plants are typically rated at 30% efficiency.
Japanese children’s theme park company Kids City Japan KK has announced that it has plans to open new solar power plant just 15.5 miles from the still leaking Fukushima nuclear reactor.
The company has a chain of theme parks called KidZania where children are educated about differing professions. The company has plans to open the one megawatt plant by October of next year. They will be conducting tours where children will see first hand how workers maintain and monitor the plant.
Understandably, there’s an anti-nuclear sentiment growing across Japan after the quake and tsunami damaged the various nuclear plants.
Once an empire, Greece is now confronted with maybe the country’s most harsh economic crisis since its birth in ancient times. However, solar power seems to represent part of Greece’s salvation, just like Archimedes’ solar rays once saved them from the enemy.
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