More Data Centers Using On-Site Solar Power 88
1sockchuck writes "Solar power hasn't been widely used in data centers because it takes a very large installation of photovoltaic solar panels to generate the levels of energy required by these facilities. But the month of April has seen the debut of four new data centers featuring on-site solar arrays."
Re:Makes sense to me (Score:4, Informative)
It's actually starting to make more sense.
Previously it had to be subsidized and was more of a way for offsetting your costs to taxpayers, than to the Sun ;).
But from what I see the prices are dropping: http://sunelec.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=5 [sunelec.com]
Currently average retail electricity costs are about USD0.09 per kWh (grabbed from DOE). So: ( 1.60 per watt ) / ( 0.09 per kWh) = 2 years.
The sun doesn't shine brightly all the time and there are installation costs etc, so the payback time is about a multiple of that say 8-10 years?
Re:A Perfect Match (Score:4, Informative)
This is a roundabout way of going about it unless you power an entire datacentre off DC. Solar is typically stepped up via an inverter for larger operations, and the inverter syncs with the grid. Its actually kind of fun to watch our old analogue power meter stop spinning backwards and start spinning forwards when we turn the oven on and stop exporting power.
The transition between night and day should be perfectly seemless with no batteries required. These aren't diesel generators that we need to wait for, it's a grid, there's no sync delay and every Elec101 student should be able to design a system that seemlessly goes from export to import with no need for batteries.
That's not to say that there don't need to be batteries, but that switching to grid power is definitely not one of the reasons for them.