Google's love for solar may extend to other renewables

BOSTON--When it comes to bragging rights and solar power, Google's on top: it has the largest corporate installation of solar-powered electricity yet.

But that apparently is just the beginning. The search giant is also considering other forms of renewable energy, according to Robyn Beavers, the director of environmental programs at Google. Google intends to generate 50 megawatts of electricity from renewable forms for its operations by 2012.

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin charge a plug-in beneath its solar-powered car port.

(Credit: Google)

Beavers spoke at the Conference on Clean Energy here on Monday where she outlined a number of initiatives that Google participates in aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Those include the 1.6 megawatt solar installation at its corporate headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. In addition to panels on building roofs, Google has constructed a car port with solar panels as a roof, under which people can charge up plug-in hybrids.

Asked whether Google was considering wind power, Beavers said she couldn't say. But she didn't leave much doubt that all forms of renewable energy are actively under consideration.

"Wind, solar, geothermal, fuel cells--you name it, we're looking into it," she said.

Corporate buyers are prized customers for the thousands of clean-tech start-ups that have cropped up over the past few years. Wal-Mart's decision to invest in solar has been a closely watched move and indicator of solar power demand.

Renewable energy projects like solar, wind or biomass can be financially interesting to businesses because they typically allow companies to get a contract with fixed energy prices, which acts as a hedge against rising rates.

In the case of Google, which consumes a lot of electricity to power its operations and data centers, its investment in solar electricity will pay for itself in seven and a half years. Its consumption from the grid has been reduced by 30 percent and its bills cut down a lot more than 30 percent, Beavers said.

[billmosby]

Good.

Did they offset the extra heat absorption characteristics of the cells
by providing a bit of reflectivity to go along with it?

[ColdMast]

next up: 1.21 gigawatts of power by 2030

- wink

[shynes]

Good news, bad story

The assertion that google has cut its power consumption from "the grid" by 30% is simply and obviously wrong. Today, google probably consumes over 1000 MW continuous draw, and this will probably double in the next 3 years. Loud applause for the alternative efforts, but please don't overstate the result.

Steve Hynes

[imacpwr]

Google's still just a search engine..

with more money than they know what to do with. How long will it
be before the bubble bursts and they'd wish they hadn't tossed so
much out the window..?

[Kimsh]

Energy consumption

Oh please, grid consumption down 30% and they are talking abotu reaching 50 MWatts in 2012. 50 MWatts is not 30% of the consumption of one large data center. This continual numbers and publicity game from Google is getting lame. If this is not a disasterous misquote then the Google guys are full of it. Maybe they don't include the data centers at all, cos really at 1.5% of the total power produced in the US, and climbing, they don't really matter huh?

[Manhattan2]

Google was wrong to put solar panels on their roof.

Sure Google got good press from their WORLDS LARGEST INSTALLATION but it was done in error. Google is smart enough to run the numbers. Tax breaks and state and federal incentives may have made the solar panel installation more appealing to Google but what they did was a mistake. We sent over emails before the installation to no avail. A smarter solar installation using a solar transfer for the same invested dollar could have earned them 2-3 times more CO2 reduction than they got with their rooftop installation. In this case it could have been about PR but if companies really want to make a difference explore a Solar Transfer! Google Solar Transfer and you will find more. Tell the Google execs it is not too late, we can fix their error.

[skrubol]

Vaporware or scam?

I still haven't decided which solartransfer is. Two things it's not is a product which is available today, and a product which has real research behind it.

[spothannah]

Solar

Is anybody looking at Albedo footprint as opposed to Carbon footprint?