Google announced a project in October 2006 to install 9,212 solar panels on the roof of its headquarters complex.  Currently over 90% of these panels are installed and active. They expect the installation will produce 30% of the peak power requirements of the headquarters buildings. For example, as I post this, they report 0.6 MW have been produced over the last 24 hour period.  The roughly ½ megawatt is arguably in the noise when compared with the Google total data center power consumption which remains a carefully guarded secret.  With high 10’s of data centers world-wide each consuming in the 10WM range, the 0.6 produced on the roof of the HQ building is a very small number.  Nonetheless, 0.6MW is MUCH better than nothing and it’s great to see these resources committed to making a difference.

The real time power production report for this installation can be found at: http://www.google.com/corporate/solarpanels/home.  Thanks to Lewis Curtis for sending this my way.

                                    --jrh

James Hamilton, Windows Live Platform Services
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