Report: Bloom Energy to fuel Apple’s iCloud cell farm

Back in October, we told you about a 174 acre solar farm Apple reportedly begun building to power the new Maiden, North Carolina data center facility. Surrounding the facility will be the largest end user–owned, onsite solar array in the United States consisting of a 100-acre, 20-megawatt facility that will provide approximately 42 million kWh of clean, renewable energy each year. The company’s 2012 Environmental Update also revealed another non-utility fuel cell installation right next to the data center, the nation’s biggest.

Supposedly running on biogas made from landfill waste and carbon-neutral, it will be providing 40 million kWh of 24×7 baseload renewable energy every year. Now, GigaOM has it “from a couple sources” that Apple has commissioned fuel cell maker Bloom Energy to supply them with fuel cells for the facility. Apparently, Apple already has “a few Bloom fuel cells running on its campus”.

Bloom’s fuel cells are large boxes that suck up oxygen on one side and fuel (natural gas or biogas) on the other to produce power. That means that with the fuel cells (and a solar array that will be built) Apple’s data center will have a source of cleaner distributed power that isn’t coming from the local utility via the grid. Bloom offers boxes capable of supplying 100 kW, which could translate into 50 Bloom Boxes being installed at Apple’s data center.

The Sunnyvale, California-headquartered fuel cell maker was founded in 2002 by CEO K.R. Sridhar. Originally called Ion America, it was renamed to Bloom Energy in 2006. Now, what’s interesting about Bloom Energy is that the company was funded by Apple’s old pal, venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins.

http://9to5mac.com/2012/03/02/report-bloom-energy-to-fuel-apples-icloud-cell-farm/