Update on Google’s Solar Panel Project
You might remember that Google announced it’s solar energy project in October of 2006. The project was projected to offset roughly 1/3 of Google’s peak electricity use at their headquarters in Mountain View (Googleplex). That would be the equivalent to the electricity requirements of approximately 1,000 average California homes.
At the time of this posting Google had produced 9,993 kilowatt-hours of electricity from the sun during the previous 24 hours. To date they’ve installed roughly 8,200 panels on 8 buildings and 2 carports. That’s about 90% of their plan.
Makes me think. OK, lets do some quick math.
So, divide the 4,104,900,000,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity we use annually in the U.S. by 365 days and we get 11,246,301,370 kilowatt-hours per day.
Divide 9,993 kilowatt-hours by 10 buildings at Googleplex. That’s roughly 1,000 kilowatt-hours per building. Now, for kicks lets multiply that by the roughly 3,000 Walmart stores and we get 3,000,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity.
Quickly divide the U.S. consumption by the potential electricity generated on top of the Walmart stores and that tells us we only have to repeat the process 3,800 times and we’ve covered the electricity needs in the U.S.
Of course the math here is basically meaningless but for one point. It shows us that alternative solutions are not inconceivable. These are numbers and orders of magnitude we can all grasp and understand.
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Careful, if WalMart finds out we will start having to buy our electricity from them too… but then maybe they can give us a better price and cause less pollution.
Hmm… What if WalMart had to provide electricity back to the community as part of getting permission to build it’s stores……
Exactly! Communities require all kinds of concessions from businesses moving into their area and vice versa. Why not solar panels or small wind farms?
Dear Challis, ALL,
AS a solar energy enthusiast and professional in the field, I’ve been watching the performance of the Googleplex installation and am somewhat disappointed at its sub-optimal performance. Also, alarmed at prevalent and similar conditions at so many less known installations in Northern California. We decided to do something about it. We put up a public service site that offers instant indicator of ‘ideal/optimal’ performance number for any visitor who would enter a few critical parameters about their solar system.
Please check it out, -at http://www.wattminder.com.
Also, I’m amazed at your rich website for vast topics
covered. Keep it up. Hope you can give us some advice on how to publicize our free service, without spending our precious little resource.
Thanks and Regards,
Steve