Apple Building Solar Farm at North Carolina Data Center

According to the Charlotte Observer, Apple has quietly begun building a solar farm at its massive new data centre in Maiden, North Carolina. The new solar farm is said to generate a large amount of power for the facility. Although building permits have yet to be submitted to Catawba County officials, the County has given Apple permission to reshape the slope in preparation of the solar farm.

Apple has quietly begun work on a solar farm that apparently could help power its sprawling data center in southern Catawba County.

Permits issued by Catawba County show that the Cupertino, Calif., company has been approved to reshape the slope of some of the 171 acres of vacant land it owns on Startown Road, opposite the data center, in preparation of building a solar farm.

The Hickory Daily Record confirms that the plot is indeed across the street from the data center and not far from residential houses. Nearby residents haven’t exactly been thrilled with the land work being done. To clear the land, Apple uses fires that cause significant amount of smoke that is drifting into the houses.

That smoke is Apple clearing more than 100 acres of land across from its data center, which opened earlier this year at 5977 Startown Road. It was reported earlier this year that the data facility will be a cloud-computing center for Apple.

In the application, Apple described the work as “Solar panel farm A” for the 170.99 acres of land.