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
Bldg RedW-D/2072, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, Washington, 98052
W:+1(425)703-9972 | C:+1(206)910-4692 | H:+1(206)201-1859 | JamesRH@microsoft.com