Apple’s New Solar Farm Eats Up 107 Football Fields [Video]

This land will soon be engulfed by a mammoth solar farm that will power Apple's data center.

Apple’s plans to build a giant solar farm in Maiden, North Carolina, to power its new data center are well underway. The new building will require a 20 megawatt array of solar panels to create enough power, and that’s going to take up over 171 acres of land, or 107 NFL football fields. This aerial footage gives you a sense of just how huge the facility will be.

Some people will go to great lengths to catch a glimpse of Apple’s work in progress, and that includes flying a helicopter above its solar farm to see just how big it is. This video, shot by Five 9s Digital, shows the progress Apple has already made on the facility:

The new facility will become the world’s largest solar array dedicated to data center operations, according to Data Center Knowledge, surpassing the 14 megawatt array that supports the McGraw-Hill data center in East Windsor, New Jersey. However, some believe solar power for data centers isn’t such a great idea.

James Hamilton of Amazon Web Services says that he wonders whether solar farms are really a mix between a “bad idea and pure marketing.” He believes the environmental impact and the economics of these giant facilities may not justify their purpose.

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