Is Apple becoming the greenest data center operator? Fuel Cell added to Solar

A friend tipped me off on Apple's fuel cell projects on Saturday, but I've been busy and couldn't get to the post until today.

There is news on the fuel cells following Apple's news on solar powering 20MW.

ArsTechnica has a post pointing to other information.

Apple building fuel cells to help power N. Carolina data center

By Jacqui Cheng | Published about 2 hours ago

Apple plans to build a massive fuel cell facility in North Carolina to accompany the data center that powers iCloud. The company revealed its plans as part of a filing with the North Carolina Utilities Commission and was first reported by the Greensboro News & Observer, which noted over the weekend that the project will be the "national's largest such project not built by an electric utility company."

If you look at the official filing you can see a bit more details.

GigaOm's Katie Fehrenbacher speculates that the fuel cells are Bloom Energy.

Apple didn’t name the fuel cell supplier in the filing, but the fact that it will use 200 kW fuel cells points the finger even more solidly at the Valley’s Bloom Energy. Bloom Energy sells both 100 kW (ES-5400) and 200 kW (the ES-5700) fuel cells. UTC, another fuel cell maker, only sells a 400 kW fuel cell.

I wrote last month that it looked like Bloom Energy is the supplier for Apple’s fuel cells. This local report states that Bloom Energy is indeed the supplier for Apple’s fuel cell farm, but doesn’t say where it got that info. That local report also says that Apple “will extract hydrogen from natural gas supplied by Piedmont Natural Gas,” and then “will arrange to produce landfill methane gas or some other biogas to offset its natural gas use.”

Don't expect Solar Panels at an Amazon Data Center without tax incentives

James Hamilton writes an analysis of Facebook's and Apple's solar panel deployments.

Love Solar Power But...

I love solar power, but in reflecting carefully on a couple of high profile datacenter deployments of solar power, I’m really developing serious reservations that this is the path to reducing data center environmental impact. I just can’t make the math work and find myself wondering if these large solar farms are really somewhere between a bad idea and pure marketing, where the environmental impact is purely optical.

And closes with this.

Looking more deeply at the Solar Array at Apple Maiden, the panels are built by SunPower. Sunpower is reportedly carrying $820m in debt and has received a $1.2B federal government loan guarantee. The panels are built on taxpayer guarantees and installed using tax payer funded tax incentives. It might possibly be a win for the overall economy but, as I work through the numbers, it seems less clear. And, after the spectacular failure of solar cell producer Solyndra which failed in bankruptcy with a $535 million dollar federal loan guarantee, it’s obvious there are large costs being carried by tax payers in these deployments. Generally, as much as I like data centers, I’m not convinced that tax payers should by paying to power them.

As I work through the numbers from two of the most widely reported upon datacenter solar array deployments, they just don’t seem to balance out positively without tax incentives. I’m not convinced that having the tax base fund datacenter deployments is a scalable solution. And, even if it could be shown that this will eventually become tax neutral, I’m not convinced we want to see datacenter deployments consuming 100s of acres of land on power generation. And, when trees are taken down to allow the solar deployment, it’s even harder to feel good about it.  From what I have seen so far, this is not heading in the right direction. If we had $x dollars to invest in lowering datacenter environmental impact and the marketing department was not involved in the decision, I’m not convinced the right next step will be solar.

Given this information, I wouldn't hold my breath for a solar panel at Amazon for a few reasons.

1. The economics don't make sense for Amazon
2. Amazon would not want the visibility for its data centers.  (Is Amazon the next Greenpeace target?)
3. Taxes is what drives many Amazon decisions, and they look long term at tax incentives.
4. There are probably a bunch more, but bottom line the numbers don't support solar panels

CleanWeb makes a showing at SXSW amongst the mass of SoLoMo

What is SoLoMo?

SOCIAL-LOCAL-MOBILE

Venture Capital maven John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers coined the acronym SoLoMo to sum up this convergence of 3 major powers and acknowledges they are affecting all aspects of business faster than most managers have realised.

GigaOm's Katie Fehrenbacher phttp://gigaom.com/cleantech/amidst-solomo-tacos-cleanweb-peeks-out-at-sxsw/osts on a clean tech presentation at SXSW.

Amidst SoLoMo & tacos, Cleanweb peeks out at SXSW

By Katie Fehrenbacher Mar. 13, 2012, 10:30am PT No Comments

There’s never a big focus on next-generation energy solutions at the annual geekfest South by Southwest — I’ve skipped the show over the past few years. But Spring Ventures founder Sunil Paul braved the rain and the ever-present SoLoMo apps to give a rendition of his presentation on the Cleanweb, or using computing, mobile, and the web to address resource constraints for energy, food and water.

I saw Sunil at GreenNet.  Here is his talk at the event.

Wind-powered Green Data Center in the works

ZDnet reports on a wind powered data center project in Austin, TX

Wind-powered Texas data center moves closer to reality

By Heather Clancy | February 6, 2012, 4:27am PST

Summary: Project spearheaded by Baronyx and subsidiary WindData will draw power from offshore wind farms.

I used to hear a lot more about data centers powered by alternative energy two years ago, before energy efficiency measures started stealing some of the government and utility incentive thunder.

But WindData, an operator owned by renewable energy and data center project developer Baronyx, apparently is still hard at work on a $70 million data center project outside of Austin, Texas, that is supposed to be completely powered by wind energy. Yep, that’s right, Texas. When it is hot, the coastal winds apparently kick up nicely, helping fuel the growing demand for power in the state.

The power cost in reported to be sub $0.05 kw-hr

Because WindData is closely affiliated with Baronyx, it can offer competitive power pricing, at up to 4.6 cents per kilowatt-hour, according to some of the information that I have seen published about the project.

New Nuclear Reactor Plant design is simpler, using gravity and natural heat convection

NYTimes reports on Westinghouse has NRC approval for a new nuclear reactor design.

Approval of Reactor Design Clears Path for New Plants

Westinghouse

Westinghouse's AP1000 nuclear power plant will use a design that relies on forces like gravity and natural heat convection.

By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: December 22, 2011

WASHINGTON — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission unanimously approved a radical new reactor design on Thursday, clearing away a major obstacle for two utilities to begin construction on projects in South Carolina and Georgia.

The decision, a milestone in the much-delayed revival of plant construction sought by the nuclear industry, involves the Westinghouse AP1000, a 1,154-megawatt reactor with a so-called advanced passive design. It relies more heavily on forces like gravity and natural heat convection and less on pumps, valves and operator actions than other models do, in theory diminishing the probability of an accident.

Here are details on how much simpler the design is.

The AP1000 design saves money and time with an accelerated construction time period of approximately 36 months, from the pouring of first concrete to the loading of fuel. Also, the innovative AP1000 features:

50% fewer safety-related valves 80% less safety-related piping 85% less control cable 35% fewer pumps 45% less seismic building volume

Some of the design details sound like a modular data center construction.

Two of the drivers of plant construction costs are the cost of financing during the construction phase and the substantial amount of skilled-craft-labor hours needed on site during construction. TheAP1000^® technique of modularization of plant construction mitigates both of these drivers.

Overnight construction costs
The AP1000 was designed to reduce capital costs and to be economically competitive with contemporary fossil-fueled plants. The amount of safety-grade equipment required is greatly reduced by using the passive safety system design. Consequently, less Seismic Category I building volume is required to house the safety equipment (approximately 45 percent less than a typical reactor). Modular construction design further reduces cost and shortens the construction schedule. Using advanced computer modeling capabilities, Westinghouse is able to optimize, choreograph and simulate the construction plan. The result is very high confidence in the construction schedule.