Google gloats over solar success

Google has produced enough electricity from its headquarters in the last four days to watch about 251,073 hours of television on a flat screen.

The news comes from Google's site dedicated to letting folks know exactly how many kilowatt-hours its solar project is paying out.

Aerial view of the solar panels covering several of Google's buildings in Mountain View, Calif.

(Credit: Google)

The search giant has covered the roofs of eight buildings and two carports at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters with solar panels in an effort to build the largest solar panel installation of any corporate campus in the U.S.

On Monday, the system was turned on and Google has been monitoring its success rate. The average seems to be about 10,000 kilowatt-hours per day, according to Google's solar graph.

That equals 8,347 coffee makers running for an hour, 6,257 dishwasher runs, 3,642 loads of laundry washed and dried, or 41,737 alarm clocks running for 24 hours, going by U.S. Department of Energy standards.

Google said it's producing enough electricity for each solar paneled building to cover about 30 percent of its demands.

[Manhattan2]

Could anyone other than Google afford to do this?

Wouldn't the solar panels produce more power if they were on a dual axis tracking system? It takes too long for solar installations like this to pay for themselves for anyone other than a large company like Google to be able to afford. The rest of us can?t take a loss to this degree while trying to help the planet. There needs to be another way. Google could help fund the research rather than install panels. What was the final cost? What was the GHG output to create the panels, the structure, etc. Is there a link that we can see what the output is per panel. Maybe someone out there can use google earth to zoom in and count the panels, estimate the cost, and see wht the true energy gain is each NIGHT and day. If someone from google reads this and you have run out of space we have a better location for you to put your panels. Tax payers chipped in for this correct? Now that is a goog PR move for low dollars and after 7 years Google claims they will be getting free power? Maybe the value of that free power should trickle back to the tax payers.

[lynxss]

Many have done this cheaply

There are several companies out there that will install pannels on your building or car park for you povided you buy the electricity generated from them at a certain rate for so many years, which is usually a fair bit cheaper than peak rates at mid day from utility companies. City government buildings, a few Whole Foods super markets and Wall Mart, etc have been doing this. It allows them to get into solar without the huge upfront costs and save on power during the heat of the day when its the most expensive. So they are effectively leasing solar pannels on thier own roof.

The building doesnt have the large up front cost of doing it themselves, plus the cost of any maintenence and saves money on electricity and the solar company pays out one up front instalation cost but makes a profit over time. Everyone wins, capitolism at its best.

[Manhattan2]

No matter who pays for the panels they are being put in the wrong place

The question should have been who is eating the cost of the poor ROI of any photovoltaic solar installation? Is it the taxpayers by subsidizing programs that don?t capture as much of the suns energy as they could if they were deployed in a more sensible manner? There is a better way. Google should have the engineers that can figure this out, Wal-Mart should investigate, and any corporation that makes a PR announcement about their programs should specify whether or not they explored our findings before they moved forward with their installations.