Google is going completely green like many other companies. They suggest going towards renewable sources of energy and even saving on cooling costs by increasing the temperature. If we can somehow properly harness the sun's energy, all our needs would be taken care. Also, some alternate energy sources are also being looked at.
Microsoft plans to install solar panels on the roof of its new Internet data center in San Antonio to provide renewable energy for some of the facility’s massive power requirements. The $550 million, 470,000 square feet facility will ultimately use more than 50 megawatts of power, making it the largest single customer of the local utility, CPS Energy. The facility will house thousands of servers to power Microsoft's Live online services.
Microsoft's decision to use solar panels in this setting is unusual. Data centers use enormous amounts of electricity, but few of these facilities use solar power because of the cost and scalability issues. Only one small data center, AISO, is known to be powered entirely by solar power.
Such initiatives are very necessary because Dc need a considerable amount of power and its good if we seek some alternate means of getting power. Soon, it will become the need of every DC.
Space needed for solar panels is the big issue with them. If your DC doesnt sit on 100s of acres of land, its not viable. Its the same thing with geothermal cooling.
Intel is testing out solar Panels in New Mexico I think -
I have only added Solar panels to 2 clients for secondary support for specific equipment not the whole data center as of yet -
Depending on you tier of availability will determine how you can use solar panels - Know I have done Wind Farms for 2 clients with Generator as backup .
They're just testing the technology. So far, google has come a long way in implementing the solution, but they don't have one data center relying fully on solar power.