Apple Planning Colossal Solar Roof For New Silicon Valley HQ

An recent update of plans for the new Apple headquarters in Cupertino, Silicon Valley reveals that a change has been made to include a colossal solar roof, covering the whole roof of the circular building.

The building covers 2.8 million square feet (although it’s 4 stories high), so that’s a huge amount of solar paneling. The installation is slated to generate as much as 5 MW of power, which is enough to power nearly all of the new Apple campus.

In his presentation to the Cupertino City Council earlier this year (see the presentation video below), the late Steve Jobs indicated that Apple was planning to generate all of the building’s electricity on-site, and only use the power grid as a back-up; “We think that makes more sense”, he said. When the power grid goes down, Apples wants to be able to keep the building, and its 12,000 workers working.

Apple also plans to power a building in Maiden, North Carolina with solar power, where it has 174 arces. The power will supply Apple’s new $1 billion data center.

Below, watch Steve Jobs personally presenting plans for the new Apple HQ to the Cupertino City Council. It’s a very impressive building, and clearly the Cupertino council officials were falling over themselves to have Steve Jobs build the new Apple headquarters in the area.