Everyone knows that Google added a bunch of solar panels to their buildings, generating about 30% of Google’s peak electricity demand. Google Solar‘s website is actually pretty cool, informative, and entertaining – I highly recommend checking it out. For example, in the last 24 hours, Google’s solar panels have collected about 9179 kilowatt-hours of electricity, which is apparently enough to run 3,337 loads of laundry. Who knew? Here’s a picture of Google’s solar collection effort:
i/o Data Centers is adding about 3X the amount of solar that the Googleplex has to the roof of their Phoenix ONE data center in Phoenix, AZ. Three times the amount of solar would power nearly all of Google’s need.
i/o Data Centers is taking advantage of the difference between night and day rates for kilowatt-hour cost, which I think is pretty excellent. At night when electricity is cheaper, they’ll use grid power to run the chillers and other extremely important server-protecting gear. During the day they’ll run everything from the storage batteries on the solar system. From an article at Data Center Knowledge:
“If we can generate 3 megawatts during the day, combined with our thermal storage, we can shave our power costs by about 50 percent,” said George Slessman, the CEO of i/o Data Centers. “Anything I can do to move my power consumption to off-peak hours is going to save a lot of money. Solar is the renewable approach that works best during peak daytime power pricing.”
I mean, they’ve got 11 acres of rooftop. Why not do this, right? I’m trying to get more information from i/o Data Centers about the installation and see if they have images and more information. I will update this post if I hear back.
