Apple to use only green power for main data center

Apple Inc plans to power its main U.S. data center entirely with renewable energy by the end of this year, taking steps to address longstanding … Apple Inc plans to power its main U.S. data center entirely with renewable energy by the end of this year, taking steps to address longstanding environmental concerns about the rapid expansion of high-consuming computer server farms. “The plan we are releasing today includes two solar farms and together they will be twice as big as we previously announced, thanks to the purchase of some land very near to the data center in Maiden, which will help us meet this goal.” Going green Concerns about the ever-expanding power consumption of computer data centers have mounted in recent years, as technology giants build enormous facilities housing servers to cater to an explosion in Internet traffic, multimedia use and enterprise services hosting, via cloud computing. “We haven’t finalized our plans for on-site generation, but any power we need to run our center in Prineville that we get from the grid will be 100 percent renewable and locally generated sources,” the Apple CFO said. “SunPower will take a bite out of Apple’s environmental impact with our highest efficiency solar at their North Carolina data center, the nation’s largest privately-owned solar array,” SunPower CEO Tom Werner said via email.