Apple building fuel cells to help power N. Carolina data center

Apple begins a renewable fuel cell project in North Carolina to help power its facilities.

Apple plans to build a massive fuel cell facility in North Carolina to accompany the data center that powers iCloud. The company revealed its plans as part of a filing with the North Carolina Utilities Commission and was first reported by the Greensboro News & Observer, which noted over the weekend that the project will be the "national's largest such project not built by an electric utility company."

The fuel cell project will be built in Maiden, NC, near the company's existing data center and in the same complex as Apple's 171-acre solar farm. "[Apple's] facility will consist of 24 fuel cell modules. It will extract hydrogen from natural gas supplied by Piedmont Natural Gas," wrote the News & Observer. "To qualify as a renewable facility, Apple or Bloom will arrange to produce landfill methane gas or some other biogas to offset its natural gas use. The biogas supplier has not been named, but that information will have to be disclosed to win approval from the N.C. Utilities Commission."

Apple recently published its own report (PDF) outlining its various green initiatives, which mentions that the company has "secured regulatory authority to supplement our energy needs in Cupertino and Santa Clara Valley with offsite, grid-purchased renewable energy, which was not previously possible." The company wrote that it plans to eventually power all its facilities with 100 percent renewable energy, and the fuel cell project in North Carolina appears to be a major first step in that plan.

Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui