Green Apple: Company’s new data center to sport one of the largest solar arrays in the U.S.

Apple's data center in North Carolina will also be home to one of the largest fuel cell installations

In 2011, environmental organization Greenpeace named Apple as the least green company of the year. Today, nearly a year later, the company released an environmental update detailing plans that may redeem its image in the eyes of eco-conscious people. According to the report, Apple will build one of the largest solar array facilities and fuel cell installations in North Carolina to power its new data center.

The 100 acre land surrounding the data center will be transformed into a 20 megawatt solar array facility that the company claims will be the largest one owned by an end-user in the United States once it's done. A land adjacent to the data center will also serve as the site for a five megawatt fuel cell facility that will be the largest among all the non-utility installations in the country.

Both of these renewable energy installations will contribute part of the power needed to run Apple's North Carolina data center that could use up to 100 megawatts of energy every year, according to Greenpeace. That's roughly as much power as what 80,000 homes in the United States could consume in a year.

In spite of Apple's poor standing with Greenpeace in 2011, its North Carolina data center actually has several energy-efficient design elements. These include the capacity to monitor power usage in real time, the use of cold ambient air and chilled water for cooling, and the use of highly-efficient LED lightning.

[via Mashable, Time]

This article was written by Mariella Moon and originally appeared on Tecca

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