Well Google this past week announced that they would be implementing solar energy systems on the roofs of their corporate offices in the Bay Area. You can only imagine the splash this got in the world of the Internet and corporate news. Google is on the pages of the worlds news almost everyday and this announcement surely has gotten some very good attention for the solar power industry.
Now this adding of solar panels to their buildings will not supply all of the power for the company’s needs but Google hopes to raise awareness of solar power in the corporate world. In fact Google hopes to eventually creat about one third of its power needs at its one million square foot campus located south fo San Francisco.
The founders of the company Larry Page and Sergey have been big supporters alternative energy. They have been driving hybrid cars since they came on the market.
The anticipated savings from future energy bills should enable Google to recoup the solar project’s costs in five to 10 years, estimated David Radcliffe, the company’s vice-president of real estate.
“We hope corporate America is paying attention. We want to see a lot of copycats” of this project, Radcliffe said.
The installation of the solar project is being handled by Pasadena based EI Solutions, which is managed by Bill Gross who once worked in the Internet search business himself.
The cost and use of energy at Google is a major concern because of the the huge load that is required to run its computer servers farms.
No one is saying this is the salvation of solar energy but it does appear to be a major push forward to getting the business world on board for the future.