Many of you will remember that in the spring of 2010 we opened Topaz, our first wholly-owned data center in South Jordan (which was awarded LEED Gold status by the US Green Building Council). Since then we’ve continued to invest in Utah and worked to demonstrate our commitment to make our operations there even more efficient and sustainable.
Today, we are announcing eBay’s largest solar installation to date, atop the Topaz data center. The installation includes a 665 kilowatt (kW) solar power system, designed and installed by SPG Solar, featuring 72,000 square feet of solar panels, covering virtually every inch of roof space on the data center. The installation will produce 924,013 kilowatt hours (kWh) of clean electricity annually, which is equivalent to offsetting 702 tons of greenhouse gas emissions or planting 136 acres of pine forests. In addition to the environmental benefits, we anticipate the installation will pay for itself in just four years. The Topaz solar array, along with our 650 kW array and 500 kW Bloom Fuel cell installation at our San Jose headquarters and our 100 kW solar array in Denver, brings our total renewable energy capacity to almost 2 Megawatts. To put that in perspective, that’s equivalent to about 11% of our total US data center electricity demand.
Cheers,
RBH
