Apple to Build Solar Farm to Power Huge New Data Center

Environmentalists aren't complaining about Apple's policy of using solar energy to power its data centers, but it would be an oversimplification to attribute it to responsiveness to the likes of Greenpeace. "Data centers pull a ton of power," said tech analyst Rob Enderle. "Building a solar farm makes a lot of financial sense on top of its being green.

 

Apple, which has a mixed history on environmental issues, will build a solar farm to power its data center in Washoe County, Nev.

"SunPower is working with Apple to design and build this project," Ingrid Ekstrom, spokesperson for SunPower, told TechNewsWorld. "We will be building a SunPower C7 Tracker system at the site." 

The farm will reportedly generate 20 MW of electricity, some of which will be sold to Sierra Pacific Power Co., a utility operating in Nevada doing business as NV Energy. 

What's Happening in Washoe County

Apple is building a large data center in the Reno Technology Park, about 15 minutes east of the city of Reno. An initial building occupying about 20,000 square feet was reportedly completed in March.

That building is on an Apple-owned lot of about 345 acres. When completed, the Reno facility will reportedly be Apple's fourth-largest data center in the United States.

Apple approached Sierra, aka NV Energy, in 2012 and leased from it 137 acres of land for 20 years for the purpose of building the data center, according to Bobby Hollis, NV Energy's executive of renewable energy.

The two companies have entered various agreements, including ground and a solar-array leases and a renewable energy agreement, Hollis said. Apple will pay for the installation and construction of the solar array. 

About the C7 Tracker

SunPower's C7 Tracker solar concentrators, which will be used in the solar farm, consist of a horizontal single-axis tracker with rows of parabolic mirrors reflecting light onto solar cells.

The C7 Tracker concentrates the sun's energy 7 times, Ekstrom said.

The C7 Tracker technology was first commercially deployed at Arizona State University's Polytechnic campus in Mesa, Ariz., in April.

Why Apple's Playing Nice 

Apple isn't the only company to look toward clean power; eBay is expanding its flagship data center in Utah and will use renewable energy to power that addition. This will be the company's fifth and largest renewable energy installation. Google also supports renewable energy sources, through Google Green.

These moves followed reports in 2008 that data centers would face a power shortage by 2011, leading companies to redesign their data centers, vendors to unveil more power-efficient servers, and power utilities to offer rebates for reduced power consumption or better-designed data centers.

"Data centers pull a ton of power," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told TechNewsWorld. "Building a solar farm makes a lot of financial sense on top of its being green. You'll see a lot of companies doing this."

 

 

IT Spending To Hit $3.7 Trillion

The IT services industry is on track to spend globally $3.7 trillion in 2013.  Gartner, the analyst house publishing these numbers, projects spend for 2014 to rise to $3.9 trillion, up 4.1%.
From devices through to data center investments and the services that run on them are the sources of this revenue.  But that represents shrinking growth of only 2% on last year, as more expensive items like on-premise software and PCs continue to get forced out by less expensive, newer technology like lower-cost tablets and cloud service computing. It is important to note that these figures do not include the vast amounts of money that we as consumers spend online, via e-commerce and in apps etc; nor does it include services like advertising, which is often used to “pay” for content indirectly. “This may change in the future but at the moment it’s excluded,” Richard Gordon, managing vice president at Gartner has said.

Be that as it may, these figures, which do include global numbers on IT devices, provide a gauge for how and where the wider Information Technology world is growing.  The $3.7 trillion in IT spend in 2013 represents a downward revision from where Gartner thought we would be today: compare to last quarter, when Gartner noted growth of 4.1% for this year; that is now more than halved and one of the main reasons for this is because of currency fluctuations. In constant currency, growth would still be down compared to 2012, but less so, to 3.5%.  One of the bigger categories contributing to the lower forecasts comes from declines in IT devices, which Gartner has revised down to growing only 2.8% this year, or $695 billion, this is in comparison to a previous projection of 7.9%.  This is directly linked to trends in what people are buying today for their computing needs: the  time is up for bigger and more expensive PCs; and it’s the smaller, and often less expensive, tablet and smartphone time to shine.
Gartner noted that although PCs are still the second-largest category of IT devices, the shipments of these are decreasing rapidly, while shipments for mobile phones and tablets continue to climb. In all, there will be 2.4 billion devices shipped in 2013 , an increase of 6% on last year, Gartner said.  Analysts spell that out in revenue numbers that tablet revenue will grow by a mammoth 38.9% and mobile devices by 9.3%; but in PCs, “while new devices are set to hit the market in the second half of 2013, they will fail to compensate for the underlying weakness of the traditional PC market,” Gartner notes.  The biggest category of all has been and continues to be telecoms services, which includes things like broadband, telephone services and your mobile bills. These will rise to $1.7 trillion in 2013 — growth of only 0.9%, but at least reversing the declines of -0.7%in 2012.  Enterprise software remains one of the smaller categories but growing the strongest: $304 billion will be spent on enterprise this year, a rise of 6.4%. IT services and data centers will each grow only around 2%.
 

PayPal Set To Enter Space

It would seem that the world is just not big enough for PayPal as they aim towards handling financial transactions for astronauts, space travelers and tourists.

 Commercial space travel is getting closer to becoming an everyday reality and PayPal want to prove that they are ready for such progress. On Thursday they announced the launch of PayPal Galactic, which is  designed to address the upcoming need for universal payments from space.

Along with experts from the scientific community, including SETI Institute and Space Tourism Society, PayPal worked on the new initiative that will be able to handle financial transactions for those travelling in space.
Buzz Aldrin, an astronaut and author who took part in the announcement said “Trips to Mars, the moon, even orbit will require we provide astronauts and astro-tourists with as many comforts from home as possible, including how to pay each other. Whether it’s paying a bill, even helping a family member on Earth, we’ll need access to money.”

“I think humans will reach Mars, and I would like to see it happen in my lifetime,” Aldrin added. “When that happens, I won’t be surprised if people use PayPal Galactic for the little things and the big ones.”
Although a brilliant and forward-thinking plan, there are some things to consider about the PayPal Galactic initiative. For example, how will our current banking system have to adapt? Risk and fraud management is an on-going discussion on earth, so how will it fare in space?
Of course space travel is still a way off, so there is still time to address any issues and develop protocols for the necessary currency and transactions.

Good Timing

The first commercial trip to space is set to take tourists in December and according to PayPal president David Marcus, there are plans for constructing a space hotel in three years. So they obviously feel getting ahead of the game will be worthwhile.

However Jeff Foust a senior analyst at Futron commented by saying “It’s at least a little bit ahead of its time, and maybe a lot ahead of its time. At some point down the road, and maybe in terms of decades, we have to start thinking about payment and currency infrastructure.”
“If you’re going to be on a suborbital flight, you’re only going to be in flight for a few minutes,” Foust said. “You’re not going to buy something on eBay. At some point far down the road, we need to take action on these things.”
Still with private projects planned to take volunteers into space, many of them will no doubt be in need of PayPal Galactic and PayPal will be glad they were ahead of time.