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Google Goes Solar

Posted: 23/10/2006

Google, the internet search company, is converting its San Francisco headquarters to run partly on solar power, hoping to set an example for corporate America. The proposed installation is believed to be the largest solar project undertaken by a U.S. company. Google announced it's plans during a solar energy conference in Silicon Valley this week.

Google hopes photovoltaic panels could produce as much as 30 per cent of the power for its one-million-square-foot campus in Mountain View — a suburb south of San Francisco. The energy saving scheme will involve installing more than 9,200 solar panels on a high-tech mecca nicknamed the Googleplex.

Hopefully, the panels will be in place by next spring, when the P.V. array is expected to produce about 1.6 megawatts of electricity, which is enough power to supply about 1,000 homes. The installation is being overseen by Pasadena-based EI Solutions, part of a high-tech incubator run by entrepreneur Bill Gross, whose idea to link ads to search-engine requests during the 1990 inspired the business model that generates most of Google’s profits.

Google wouldn’t disclose the project’s cost, but it won’t strain a company with nearly $10 billion in cash. The anticipated savings from future energy bills should enable Google to recoup the solar project’s costs in five to 10 years. Energy costs are a major concern at Google, which already consumes a tremendous amount of power to run the computer farms that keep its search engine humming.

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are also interested in alternative energy. The billionaires began driving hybrid cars shortly after the vehicles hit the mass market. Page also is among the investors in Tesla Motors Inc., a Silicon Valley startup developing a sports car that runs on electricity.

Despite technological advances since the first photovoltaic cells were invented 50 years ago, solar power is still two to three times more expensive than fossil fuels in the United States and relies on government subsidies to compete. The solar energy industry nevertheless is expected to grow from $11 billion in 2005 to $51 billion in 2015, according to Clean Edge Inc., a market research firm.

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