Google Is Not Ready To Use Wind Electricity

Google has announced that as a part of the company’s quest to use 100% renewable energy in order to power their major as well as daily operations, and they agreed to buy the whole 240 MW output that is obtained from the Happy Hereford wind farm that is based outside of Amarillo, Texas. This is said to be the company’s fifth long-term agreement and one of the largest commitment yet.Google now made a contract for about more than 570 MW of wind energy, which is sufficient to provide power to approximately 170,000 households across the U.S.
The Happy Hereford wind farm gave assurance to Google that they will start producing energy during the late 2014.  It also takes help ofChermacEnergy, a small company owned by Native America which is based in Oklahoma.  The wind farm will provide energy to the Southwest.

Due to the present structure of the market, Google cannot consume the renewable energy that is produced by the wind farm directly. This will impact on the company’s overall carbon footprint.Currently, Google isnot using thegenerated wind electricity.  Due to some technical reasons, they cannot use it. Google’s server farm is powered with the help of the local grid, which includes coal, gas, wind and nuclear powers.

Variability in the wind power is considered as one of the mainreasonsbehind theselling of renewable power related to the grid and then buying back the standard mix by Google. There will be less variedwhile running a server farm when compared to other methods. One concern that has to be remembered here  is that the server farm should be running 24x7x365.
A serious issue that should be considered when the company tries to scale up the amount of renewablerelated to the electricity grid is to use only the controllable resources such as hydro power. This helps to keep the budget under control. To some extent solar power is also reasonably predictable. But, when it comes to wind power it is very variable from minute to minute.

Reference to these points is given at http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/09/18/googles-not-using-wind-electricity-at-all/

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