Microsoft Solar Panel Installation

With Google getting so much attention recently for its solar projects and plans to enter into solar energy production, I thought it was important to draw some positive attention to what Microsoft has done. Few people know that Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus has a very large solar installation of it’s own, and it had the panels put in over a year before Google did! Get more detail in the attached Microsoft-Solar-Information.pdf.

As a result of adopting solar power to help feed the enormous electricity use of computers and mainframes, Microsoft saves over 100K per year and helps our environment. As an employee, just going to work at that campus means you are becoming environmentally sustainable yourself, because you are using green power instead of using electricity at home. Even as energy prices rise for traditional power, sunshine never gets more expensive! A few consumer focused companies are beginning to pop up offering to “lock in” power costs in a similar way for people who own houses in certain parts of the country. Companies like Citizenre will rent out the required number of panels to sustain a household for the same price as the original “dirty” electricity would cost. Since the sun’s price doesn’t change, they will even lock in your power bill for up to 25 years!

With companies like Microsoft and Google actually saving money by using solar, this seems like a great time to get in on the action, or at least get in on some electric or solar powered toys like the Tesla…