Amazon Data Center Guru Questions Logic of Apple's Solar Farm

Amazon Data Center Guru James Hamilton questions the logic behind Apple's massive solar farm in a new blog posting.

"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."

Hamilton says that given the massive scale of Apple's solar farm it has a much higher chance of working economically; however, he argues the cost to the environment is not worth benefits.


Apple is clearing 171 acres of land for their solar farm which will only supply 4% of the power for their facility. To supply all the power for their 500,000 sq ft facility they would require 181 million sq ft of solar farm.

"I'm personally not crazy about clearing 171 acres in order to supply only 4% of the power at this facility. There are many ways to radically reduce aggregate data center environmental impact without as much land consumption. Personally, I look first to increasing the efficiency of power distribution, cooling, storage, networking and server and increasing overall utilization and the best routes to lowering industry environmental impact."

Read More [via Wired]



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