Apple’s plan to make their huge North Carolina data centre cleaner via new green biogas-powered fuel cell systems, could be up and running as soon as June, according to new details disclosed at a regulatory filing on Wednesday.
Fuel cells generate electricity through an electro-chemical process similar to batteries, but fuel cells can carry producing power so long as they have constant supply of hydrogen, which is plentiful unlike oil.
They are traditionally incredibly expensive and in the past have been used only in experimental realms, such as NASA moon launches. Recently, commercial prices have begun to fall leading to a rise commercial projects in California, a state that offers an incentive program to cover roughly half the cost of the cells.
This weeks filing offers a few more technical details on the 4.8 megawatt facility, which will be comprised of 24-200 kilowatt fuel cell systems that will “sit on a common concrete pad out of doors.” Each system will have six power-generating modules, Apple says.
The fuel cells take methane — in this case, produced by animal waste — and convert that to electricity. Apple’s installation will be built by California’s Bloom Energy, and it will be the largest such fuel cell installation built outside of the utility industry.
The first of Apple’s fuel cells could be online as early as June, and Apple expects to have the whole facility up and running by the end of November. Apple isn’t saying publicly what it will cost — that part was filed under seal.
Apple’s trying to turn around its reputation that they aren’t green enough, the new system will power their power hungry iCloud data centre, Apple are also building a massive 20-megawatt solar array.
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