San Jose-based SunPower (SPWRA) has landed a plum contract: Its solar panels will generate electricity for Apple’s (AAPL) massive new data center in Maiden, N.C., according to a filing with regulators in that state.
Apple has said renewable energy–solar panels and fuels cells–will power a “high percentage” of the data center’s overall electricity needs, leading to speculation in Silicon Valley’s clean tech industry about who its technology partners are.
“Apple is building the nation’s largest end user-owned, onsite solar array on the land surrounding the data center,” the company said in its recently released 7-page facilities report. “When completed, this 100-acre, 20-megawatt facility will supply 42 million kilowatt-hours of clean, renewable energy annually.”
One megawatt is enough to power 750 to 1,000 homes. But because the sun doesn’t shine all the time, solar industry experts say, 1 megawatt of solar power capacity is sufficient to power about 200 California households.
Apple has not announced which solar company got the contract and did not respond Tuesday to a request for comment. SunPower declined to comment, referring calls to Apple.
But an 18-page filing with the North Carolina Utilities Commission makes it clear that SunPower has been chosen to provide the solar panels for the massive solar farm.
“Each of the photovoltaic installations will consist of multiple SunPower E20 435-watt photovoltaic modules on ground-mounted single axis tracking systems,” the filing states.
The solar farm will be built in phases and could begin delivering electricity to the grid as early as October.
Data centers — facilities that house massive computer servers — gobble up enormous and rapidly growing amounts of electricity. Tech companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere are taking steps to reduce the environmental impact of data centers by boosting their energy efficiency.
But many data centers are clustered in states that largely rely on coal and nuclear energy to power the electric grid. Half of the electricity generated in the United States is from coal, and greenhouse-gas emissions from coal-fired power plants are a leading cause of climate change. Tech companies have been under fire from Greenpeace for powering data centers with what it calls “dirty energy,” and the environmental organization has pressed tech companies to commit to clean, renewable energy sources.
Apple, Facebook and Google (GOOG) have data centers within 45 minutes of each other in western North Carolina. The region, which used to be a center of textile and furniture manufacturing, now pitches itself as North Carolina’s “Data Center Corridor.”
The power in the region comes from Duke Energy, which offers some of the cheapest electricity in the nation. Duke Energy operates eight coal-fired power plants, as well as seven nuclear power plants.
Apple’s data center is the region’s largest. It occupies 500,000 square feet — the size of nearly five Walmart stores. Apple has not said what the overall energy needs of the data center are, but Greenpeace estimates that just 8 to 10 percent of the facility’s overall needs would come from renewables, with the other 90 percent coming from Duke Energy.
“While Apple has been more than happy to draw the media’s attention to how large the solar farm is, it has kept its lips stapled firmly shut when it comes to just how much coal will still be required to power the cloud,” wrote Gary Cook of Greenpeace in a recent blog post about the data center.
Apple expects at least 14 photovoltaic installations to make up the solar farm. Other details, such as projected costs and maps of the proposed site, are confidential and could not be accessed from the North Carolina Utilities Commission website. Apple has billions of dollars in cash on hand and “intends to self-finance this project,” according to the filing.
SunPower designs and manufactures high-efficiency solar cells and solar panels for residential, commercial and utility clients. Total SA, the French oil company, purchased a majority stake in SunPower last year.
Contact Dana Hull at 408-920-2706. Follow her at Twitter.com/danahull.
