Source: gigaom.com
Published: September 13, 2012
Image courtesy of WCNC-TV.
I did an interview with North Carolina’s TV Station WCNC-TV this morning about the data center cluster in their state. After the interview they kindly sent me these aerial video stills that they took from a plane above Apple’s solar farm, next to its data center in the city of Maiden.
As you can see, the solar panel farm is getting close to completion — this is what it looked like in early August when Wired commissioned those aerial photos. There’s a lot more panels installed on the field now. When done this first solar farm will stretch across 100 acres and generate 20 MW. Apple is also building another 20 MW solar farm near by.
The solar panels and trackers come from California’s SunPower (s SPRWA). SunPower makes higher efficiency solar panels, which are placed on trackers that follow the sun throughout the day.
Half of what the company bills as America’s largest private solar array is nearly finished
When complete, the two 20-megawatt installations are each expected to produce 42 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy per year. A third renewable energy power station — a 5-megawatt biogas-powered fuel cell — is supposed to produce another 40 million kWh annually.
Images courtesy of WCNC-TV.