- Apple said the project will store 240 megawatt-hours of energy, or enough to power more than 7,000 homes for one day
- It is located next to the California Flats solar installation in southeastern Monterey County, about 100 miles southeast of Apple’s Cupertino, California headquarters
As per a report by Reuters, Apple Inc said that it will build a battery-based renewable energy storage facility in Central California near a solar energy installation that already provides energy for all of its facilities in the state. It added that Apple said the project will store 240 megawatt-hours of energy, or enough to power more than 7,000 homes for one day. It is located next to the California Flats solar installation in southeastern Monterey County, about 100 miles southeast of Apple’s Cupertino, California headquarters.
The report added that the site sends 130-megawatts of electricity directly to Apple’s California facilities during daylight hours but does not provide power during dark hours. Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, told Reuters in an interview the company intends to develop what it believes will be one of the largest battery-based storage systems in the United States
Can be imitated or built upon by other companies
Jackson told Reuters that the challenge with clean energy – solar and wind – is that it’s by definition intermittent. She added that if Apple can do it, and Apple can show that it works for us, it takes away the concerns about intermittency and it helps the grid in terms of stabilisation. It’s something that can be imitated or built upon by other companies
The report added that Jackson said that Apple plans to share its findings from building the project with other companies. It was too early to say precisely how it would do so.
Apple also said that 110 of its suppliers are now moving to using clean energy for the work they do for Apple, with about 8 gigawatts of clean energy production planned as a result, or what Apple said was the equivalent of removing 3.4 million cars from the road.
