Dive Brief:

• Apple is building its third solar installation in North Carolina to provide an additional 17.5 MW of power to its data center. 
• The installation will be built by SunPower and cost $55 million.
• When finished, the project will leave Apple with an approximate total 60 MW of capacity comprised of this installation, two other solar facilities and a 10 MW fuel cell array.

Dive Insight:

Data centers accounted for 1.7% to 2.2% of all electricity used in the U.S. in 2010, according to a report by Jonathan Koomey, a Stanford University professor. Utilities will feel the impact as these energy-intensive data centers decide between central grid power or their own energy investments. 

For Apple, the North Carolina solar facilities don't feed directly into the data center due to state law -- the generated power goes into the grid and the data center takes the electricity it needs from the grid thereafter. 

Apple previously said it wants to power all of its data centers and retail stores with clean energy as soon as possible -- a notable shift since Steve Jobs passed. Apple already has 40 MW of solar in the area and is building similarly sized solar facilities to cater for its Nevada data center.