Apple's Viborg, Denmark data center is operational, powered 100% by clean energy

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After years of construction, Apple's Viborg data center is online, and Apple has spotlighted how the data center will be 100% powered by clean energy.




Apple's data center in Viborg, a 45,000-square-meter facility offering network support and data storage to its users across the region, is now running, and fully staffed. The data center helps power Apple's App Store, Apple Music, iMessage, Siri, and other services in Europe that are run entirely on renewable energy from local projects.

To help provide power for the center, Apple has announced that it will invest in the construction of two of the "worlds biggest" onshore wind turbines, to help fulfill the goal of becoming carbon neutral. The 200-meter wind turbines will be located near Esbjerg, and are expected to produce 62 gigawatt hours each year. If used solely on the grid, this would be enough to power almost 20,000 homes.

"Combatting climate change demands urgent action and global partnership -- and the Viborg data center is powerful proof that we can rise to this generational challenge," said Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives. "Investments in clean energy deliver breakthrough innovations that bring clean energy and good jobs to businesses and local communities. This is an area where we have to lead -- for the sake of our planet and future generations."

The power produced at Esbjerg will support Apple's data center in Viborg. Surplus power will be sent to the Danish grid, but it isn't clear how much that will be.

The Esbjerg wind project follows the recent completion of one of Scandinavia's largest solar arrays, located in Thisted, Northern Jutland, the first Danish solar project built without the use of public subsidies. The wind and solar projects both support Apple's newly completed data center in Viborg, which is powered by 100 percent renewable energy.

Additionally, German supplier Varta has committed to running its Apple production with 100 percent renewable power. Varta is another addition to the number of European suppliers working towards clean energy solutions.

Apple says that at present, Henkel and tesa SE in Germany, DSM Engineering Materials based in the Netherlands, STMicroelectronics based in Switzerland, and Solvay based in Belgium are all using clean energy solutions.

Since the Supplier Clean Energy project was launched in October 2015, 72 manufacturing partners in 17 different countries have committed to 100 percent renewable energy for Apple production. Once all of Apple's supplier projects are completed, these commitments will avoid over 14.3 million metric tons of CO2e annually -- the equivalent of taking more than 3 million cars off the road each year.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    thttht Posts: 5,421member
    The 200-meter wind turbines will be located near Esbjerg, and are expected to produce 62 gigawatt hours each year.
    Any more details on these two wind turbines? Wattage of the turbines? Capacity factor? Rotor diameter?

    watto_cobra
  • Reply 2 of 5
    tht said:
    The 200-meter wind turbines will be located near Esbjerg, and are expected to produce 62 gigawatt hours each year.
    Any more details on these two wind turbines? Wattage of the turbines? Capacity factor? Rotor diameter?

    edited September 2020 watto_cobra
  • Reply 3 of 5
    thttht Posts: 5,421member
    dalle said:
    tht said:
    The 200-meter wind turbines will be located near Esbjerg, and are expected to produce 62 gigawatt hours each year.
    Any more details on these two wind turbines? Wattage of the turbines? Capacity factor? Rotor diameter?
    Seems odd to call these wind turbines the "world's biggest" if they are building Vestas V164 models (10MW with 164m diam rotor) that have operational units that are 4 years old. Maybe there haven't been a bigger wind turbine over the last four years?

    12 MW wind turbines are available now, and was thinking it would be 200m rotor diameter, but the 200m could be referring to turbine height.

    Back of the envelope, 62000 MWH/yr / 8760 hrs/yr / 2 turbines = 3.5 MW average per turbine across the year. It will depend on the capacity factor at Esberg and for this size wind turbine. So a 0.35 capacity factor gets it to 10 MW. So, the V164 make sense. Just curious on the world's biggest onshore wind turbine line. Surprised there hasn't been bigger over the last 4 years.
    muthuk_vanalingamwatto_cobra
  • Reply 5 of 5
    Interesting and funny to be reminded of the tiny size of our Denmark compared to how distances are perceived internationally :-)
    Viborg, Esbjerg and Thisted are—from the perspective of most Danes—not even close to each other and their distinct dialects makes it almost impossible to communicate between these danish regions.

    Anyways, any thoughts on the implications of this “Old World” data center in addition to the existing hubs in the US? Would anyone have noticed something had changed like faster emails and iMessages, if we hadn’t read this article?
    watto_cobra
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