Apple's Data Centers Now Running on 100% Renewable Energy | Hacker News Reader

Apple's Data Centers Now Running on 100% Renewable Energy

macrumors.com

213 pointsrobin_reala86 comments

This is some pretty deceptive marketing. Apple's data centers still run on coal in places like North Carolina because that's is what is producing the electricity on the grid.

Their renewable projects produce a decent amount of electricity, but one of the most critical issues of the electrical grid is stability and solar, even with the fuel cells does not provide enough electricity on cloudy days or over night.

Solar, wind, biogas and other renewables rely on coal in places like North Carolina to keep the grid running. This marketing might make some people feel good, but it is deceptive.

That's Apple's style...

To be fair, their products are really improving in the area of energy efficiency

EDIT: If you are going to downvote, at least point to proof that it isn't happening

I'm not sure what to say, my comment was on Apple's marketing and not the actual products, I don't think it's even related... It just reminded me the case with Macs made in USA, but it was more PR than actual fact...

PS: I'm not downvoting...

They've all but abandoned making upgradable tools in favor of disposable appliances, which severely dilutes the energy savings from running them.

Nice in theory, but those upgradable tools still got treated like disposable appliances by well over 95% of the market.

Mac Minis are actually more upgradable than they used to be, and they are their "greenest" computer I think.

The software side is of course terrible. They could happily lock me out from the latest and greatest OS X - I don't care - just take my money and offer a support plan to keep 10.6 secure for the next ten years.

But doesn't the energy produced still get used, offsetting coal that would otherwise be burnt? That would seem an admirable step, even if it isn't so simple as removing non-renewable sources entirely from the picture.

This is like Power To Choose in Texas. You could choose a renewable energy source from the list. You might be supplied from the nearest coal based plant. However you are still helping the few companies that produce and sell renewable energy to the grid.

Just model the grid as a battery in your head. Just because the grid is really bad at storing energy now, doesn't meant hat this won't change soon. And that's not Apple's problem.

All the energy that they produce and put on the grid is energy that is not generated by fossil fuels or nuclear. Good enough.

This marketing might make some people feel good, but it is deceptive.

I just assume marketing == deception, anymore. I know that isn't really an accurate view of reality, but it leaves me less upset when I find out they are in fact being deceptive.

Or, thrilled when they fail to deceive you. Many companies exploit this nowadays.

I'm more than happy to have companies exploit me via being honest

Me too. Just commenting on the strange world we now inhabit, in which you gain karma for failing to do the wrong thing. I worry about this...

Simultaneously correct and incorrect :-) A number of great studies have shown the futility of depending on transient energy renewables (solar, wind, tides) for all generation, and yet the ability to cover peak loads does directly reduce the required amount of non-renewable fuel. If you're renewables generate the same amount of energy during their 'active' hours, that you consume in total, you have effectively arbitraged your use of non-renewables by carrying the load for others during the 'active' time and using their power during inactive times. The total amount of coal/gas/oil burned to create power for the 24 hr period is not affected by the amount of energy your datacenter used.

Given the drop in gas prices I expect that even in NC the power folks are considering changing/upgrading their power plants to burn that instead.

Solar and wind do not necessary help cover peak loads--because they are not reliable. Instead, much of the peak load will be covered by peaking plants (which are generally natural gas).

For example, here's the current load data for the California grid operator: http://www.caiso.com/Pages/TodaysOutlook.aspx#Renewables Note that today's peak electricity production will come at 9pm--far after solar is helpful.

Solar and wind also don't help keep the lights on in the middle of the night--that's the role of baseload plants like coal and nuclear.

According to the Energy Information Administration as of December 2012, 40 percent of NC's electricity came from coal and 39 percent from nuclear. http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=NC#tabs-4

Ok, perhaps this works better:

100% of what Apple said is true, on a monthly basis the amount of energy they consume in their data centers is exactly equivalent to the amount of energy, generated by renewable sources, that they create or buy.

Your logic is impeccable and many well-qualified observers have repeated it. Turns out not to be so:

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Grid-Integration...

The reason is human psychology: the systemic costs we pay for the old stuff is familiar and therefore doesn't seem noteworthy. From the link:

nuclear and large fossil plants actually have “far higher integration costs than renewables,” Goggin said. “Contingency reserves, the super-fast acting energy reserve supply required of grid operators in case a large power plant shuts down unexpectedly, are a major cost. Comparing the incremental cost of wind to those costs that ratepayers have always paid, the wind cost looks even more trivial.”

Deceptive marketing is what made Apple great. They're selling a culture, not tools.

In that case is not deceptive. They are selling the culture, and you know. But if you wish them to sell (or focus) in something else, despite the fact they are selling the culture (in your words), is not their fault!

Deception is say something and do otherwise...

BTW, I don't think Apple is deceptive. Google? Yeah, but Apple is very upfront: They sell things at high-value, you get into the culture, things are they way -probably the better, if you agree-, their focus is design. Is not cristal clear that now?

Yes, the only way that intentionally purchasing renewable energy matters is once it goes over the amount that would be renewable anyways.

Like if NC is already 10% renewable and 90% coal, the energy company can sell 10% of it as renewable-only without changing a single thing. It just means the average consumer goes from 10% renewable to 0% renewable.

Electricity is fungible. The power company cannot possibly serve a customer renewable electrons from the grid. This whole thing is absurd and Apple should be ashamed for making the claim.

More info: http://www.apple.com/environment/renewable-energy/

It seems like the North Carolina one is home-grown solar, the Oregon one is hydroelectric (as are most datacenters in Oregon), and the California one is (purchased) wind power.

Their North Carolina datacenter isn't getting even a tiny fraction of its power from solar. So I'm not sure what they're calling renewable energy. It's basically a flat out lie.

How do you know that more about this than Apple does? I don't see any reason to believe they're lying, from what you said?

Actually, after rereading, Apple just says they generate X amount of solar, and that the datacenter is 100% renewable, leading dumb people like me to assume that the datacenter is 100% solar. But since they never say how much energy the datacenter needs, that's not supported by the facts... I assume they are actually supplementing the solar with purchased renewable energy.

Amazon's James Hamilton estimates the north Carolina 171 acre solar array only generates %4 of the energy required for the datacenter

http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2012/03/17/ILoveSolarPowerB...

He doesn't. The energy at the NC datacenter is a combination of solar, fuel cells driven by biogas†, and grid power offset with purchased clean energy credits‡.

␄

† This doesn't mean that the methane molecules entering the fuel cell came from the biogas facility. The biogas gets pumped into the natural gas system, and gas comes out at the Apple spigot, but no one tags and sorts the methane molecules in between. That would be silly.

‡ Which means they pay a premium to cause renewable energy to be produced. If tagging molecules was silly in the gas section, there isn't even a physical thing you could tag on the grid. The electrons only move back and forth a few inches in the wires, and joules aren't “real”. A lot of the joules going into that grid are cheap coal, a tiny bit of them are the more expensive renewables. Apple is paying to put enough renewables in to cover their use.

Apple is paying to put enough renewables in to cover their use

How is this different than what the rest of us call "the power bill"?

Is there some higher rate you can choose to pay for renewable Joules?

yes

So there is a special thing called "renewable energy" which travels over the same grid as ordinary energy. It can be substituted for ordinary energy (but not vice-versa) and commands a premium price over ordinary energy.

This site looks pretty authoritative: http://www.nrel.gov/learning/re_basics.html

Hydroelectric power is considered "renewable" for what seem like good reasons. Yet, if I lived next door to Hoover Dam I would not expect to be charged extra for the privilege of consuming its locally-grown renewability. In fact, I would expect to pay less because there would be less transport loss to offset.

I'm trying to figure out to what extent this amounts to Apple writing a check to someone to bless their electricity, much like the selling of indulgences.

Producing renewable energy gives you credits which represent a cost difference between regular electricity and renewable.

The actual renewable electricity counts as regular energy, and anyone across the country can buy credits to say they subsidized renewable energy somewhere.

OK, I'm not saying this a bad thing to do.

I'm wondering where's the ROI for a for-profit corporation in "buying credits to say they subsidized renewable energy somewhere" other than, say, Marketing?

When one sets out to write checks to charities the Hoover Dam isn't exactly the first to come to mind.

Yeah, it's just marketing.

More or less what happens is

There's a pool of generators that put energy onto the grid. Each one has a price per MW generated (or MW/$)

Generation is metered and consumption is metered.

So the consumer will say "bill me for the cheapest one" or "bill me for renewal one" (or better, contract a certain amount of power from 'FlowerPower Gen'), and the producer will have "I'll have to produce X MW to provide for contracted demand"

But in the grid it's mixed, of course.

It's getting at least 10% of its 20MW from the first of 2 solar sites.

Apple's Maiden County site is designed to use about 20MW of total power:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57415501-76/apple-slaps-ba...

They currently source 60% of that onsite (the rest of their power is sourced through the grid).

http://www.apple.com/environment/renewable-energy/

What do they have onsite? 10MW of fuel-cell power and a 20MW solar plant. That means that even if the fuel cells are running non-stop at capacity, they're sourcing at least 10% from the first of their two solar sites (the second will be operational later this year).

At 2MW, that would have the solar cells operating at 10% capacity factor. Typical capacity factor for solar cell installations is 20% so the actual contribution from solar is likely closer to 15-20% of the data center's total power.

Personally I'm more interested in WHAT they're running in these data centers. I suspect it's not wall to wall Mac Mini's. So what's Apple's back end running on?

Here's a possible answers: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/09/apple_maiden_data_ce...

Possibly giving HP some money :)

You'd think they'd go Open Compute and cut out the middle man (Dell, HP, etc).

Cheers for the link. Now I wonder what they're running on from a software perspective.

This is great, but I bet apple's suppliers and manufacturers aren't anywhere close to this level of renewable energy.

"This is great but everything isn't perfect yet, so meh."

"Meh" is a pretty good way of summarizing humanity's energy relationship with the environment.

Are those suppliers and manufacturers supplying and manufacturing for Apple only, or for other companies too?

I am saying Apple makes physical products and its probably the biggest part of their business and its not represented in their renewable energy numbers. I don't think wrong to want more clarity and less PR when it comes to the environment.

So what's the point? Do you think its still better than not using renewable energy or not? Also there is no mandate to use 100% renewable energy is there?

The point is that this is green washing, and the bulk of their manufacturing operations is excluded from this "100%" figure.

I don't understand. The article clearly says the data center is using renewable energy right? You say it like its a bad thing. Every one knows the manufacturing side is what it is. Where is the intent to fool anyone here? Please point me to it.

In the linked article Apple also states that the entire company runs on 75% renewable energy. This is the figure I am criticizing.

Even there they only say corporate facilities and nothing about manufacturing (which is done by outside companies). Do you think they are lying about their corporate facilities using 75% renewable energy? If so can you please point me to any article contradicting that?

Never said they were lying. I am saying its a purely PR number that doesn't accurately depict the amount of energy that is used for them thrive as much as they have.

Basically, they are talking about their corporate operations and ignoring the actual resources consumed during their products' lifecycle from manufacture->distribution->sale->use->recycling/disposal. Hence my comment that they are green-washing.

Wow. Sorry to harp on this but you can criticize Apple when they deserve it not because you want to. You are essentially saying they are lying (green-washing) and accusing them of covering up their energy usage in their manufacturing flow. When all they talked about was their energy usage on the corporate side. Are you even reading the same article that the OP posted? Where are you reading that Apple tried to lie? This is a non-story, nothing to read into it at all. A simple nod would have been enough. There is no conspiracy or lying or cover up here. If you see it point it to me.

I never said they lied, spin is a better word for it. Look it up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing

From their website (http://www.apple.com/environment/our-footprint/) facilities make up 2% of the 'footprint' of Apple products. Making a big deal about 75% of 2% being green, I call that green-washing. I agree, it's a non-story.

Data centers are one of the fastest growing power consumers, something like 1.5-2% of all power today (eg http://www.analyticspress.com/datacenters.html). We should all be excited that Facebook, Google, Apple et al are seriously working on reducing that impact.

Clearly there's a lot more to be done (manufacturing, transportation, etc), but I don't think that undermines the progress being made in datacenters.

I wonder how much of the growth of data centers is due to people moving their computational workload "out of the closet" and into "the cloud"?

If cloud virtualization and app hosting is truly a significant driver of data center growth, it seems likely that DCs represent a category shifting and a net reduction of power consumption. So someone concerned with global or national overall energy consumption shouldn't want anyone "working on reducing that impact", they'd want that impact DCs increased.

From your linked report:

Growth in the installed base of servers in data centers had already begun to slow by early 2007 because of virtualization and other factors. Growth in the installed base of servers in data centers had already begun to slow by early 2007 because of virtualization and other factors. The 2008 financial crisis, the associated economic slowdown, and further improvements in virtualization led to a significant reduction in actual server installed base by 2010 compared to the IDC installed base forecast published in 2007

Also, perhaps more directly:

Because cloud computing installations typically have much higher server utilization levels and infrastructure efficiencies than do in-house data centers (with PUEs for some specific facilities lower than 1.1) increased adoption of cloud architectures will result in lower electricity use than if the same computing services were delivered using more conventional approaches.

Too bad most of iCloud isn't even on Apple's DCs: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/02/icloud_runs_on_micro...

I'm not sure what all they use, but much of their storage is still done by msft and amzn. I do not believe this has changed since the article was written.

This is a good thing they are doing. However, I wonder why they have so many different power adapters for their MBP, MBA and rMBP's. Each one is going to go into a landfill one day and Apple could certainly design it so that they reduce the environmental impact that comes with creating more stuff of this kind that is so avoidable.

wtf are you talking about? Until late last year for the past 6 years before that, they had exactly one adapter profile - magsafe. Recently they added a 2nd profile, and introduced an converter so old bricks can still be reused (which I'm doing right now). You can even use an underpowered brick - don't expect your high-wattage MBP to charge as fast, but it works.

Apple is one of the good guys here. Compare/contrast with Sony or Dell - it's night & day.

I'm referring to the fact that they have 6 adapters, as listed on this page: http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/mac_accessori.... They don't really need 6, do they?

How does this square with their new campus that's slated to be ready in 2015 and be primarily powered by their own natural gas generating station? [1] Have the plans changed?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Campus#Apple_Campus_2

From Apple's Description of the campus [1]:

"The project’s overall energy needs will be provided by renewable energy. The majority will be generated on-site through the use of photovoltaics and fuel cells with directed biogas. These will be supplemented by grid purchased renewable energy if needed during periods of peak demand."

Where do you view this as conflicting with the fact that their current campus is now 100% renewable?

[1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/apple-campus2-project/Project_Descr...

I guess their plans changed.

Here's Jobs saying that they'll be producing their own power using natural gas:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=g...

Well, this article is about data centers, not their work campus. But it would be interesting to know if they will eliminate fossil fuels from their campuses too.

I'm wondering how much space would be left if every company in the states all decide to switch to solar energy.

I haven't read through this yet, but it looks like an attempt at answering that question: http://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127

"... we arrive at 496,804,500,000 square meters or 496,805 square kilometers (191,817 square miles) as the area required to power the world with solar panels. This is roughly equal to the area of Spain."

That figure is to power the whole world. The original questions was about the US, which requires a substantially smaller area.

My bad, that completely flew over my head. Thanks for pointing this out!

As was pointed out, that's the whole world, not the United States. And the Sahara Desert is 3.629 million square miles. Sounds like that would be a great place to site 200,000 square miles of solar panels. Of course, this would be infeasible for any number of reasons ranging from geopolitics to superconductors, which is why it's a thought experiment.

The most obvious problem being that transmitting the power from North Africa, to say Hawaii would pose a significant challenge.

Like I said, superconductors.

Someone's already on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec

Why wonder? I worked it out once and for the USA you'd only need an area the size of Edwards Air Force Base, and the existence of Edwards AFB proves that such allocation of space is not objectionable.

Is that why the app store is so slow?

I wonder if the will start selling solar panels as a spinoff similar to how AWS got started

The problem isn't generating the power... It's moving it.

As well as storing the energy so have enough electricity when demand is high.

Copy the UK perhaps?

Large hydro dams that get water pumped into them via the renewable and then discharge when needed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_Reserve_Service

It's a good collateral effect for the environment, but it's all about money.

Then why isn't everyone doing it? And if it does become all about 'the money' then that's great, whatever gets large companies on-board with being as environmentally responsible as possible can only be a good thing..

The faster it becomes a no-brainer decision the better.

Who knows, may be they cannot afford it !?

I just think it's dust in eyes :) in 2011 was least green because of it's coal usage and now it's pure 100%...

Greenwashing.

is foxconn running green as well?

How much energy would they get from burning $1 bills that they've collected over the years from all the Pabst swilling hipsters?

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