Showing posts with label million. Show all posts
Showing posts with label million. Show all posts

4/21/2011

Google invests $100 million in world’s largest wind farm project

A $100 million investment by Google in the Shepherds Flat Wind Farm — which is on course to become the world's largest such energy producing plant — brings the search giant's clean energy investment total to $350 million.
Google announced today that it has invested $100 million in the Shepherds Flat Wind Farm, which is expected to be the world’s largest wind farm when it is completed next year.
The Shepherds Flat, currently under construction in “windy” Arlington, OR, is estimated to produce about 845 megawatts of energy, which is “enough to power more than 235,000 homes,” Google said in a statement on its website.
“This project is exciting to us not only because of its size and scale, but also because it uses advanced technology,” writes Google. “This will be the first commercial wind farm in the U.S. to deploy, at scale, turbines that use permanent magnet generators—tech-speak for evolutionary turbine technology that will improve efficiency, reliability and grid connection capabilities.”
The energy produced by the Shepherds Flat Wind Farm will be sold to Southern California Edison.
Other investors in the project include Caithness Energer and General Electric, an a variety of others.
This investment is the latest in a string of clean energy investments made by Google, the total of which now comes to $350 million.
Just last week, Google announced that it had invested $168 million in a solar tower power plant, which is currently being built in California’s Mojave Desert. That plant, which is being funded in part by $1.6 billion in loans and guarantees from the US Department of Energy, will also be the largest of its kind ever built.
Google has long committed itself to helping develop alternative energies, partially due to the staggering amounts of energy Google uses to power its massive data centers.
The search giant has entered the energy industry in other ways, as well. In January, Google submitted a filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in the hopes of being allowed to buy and sell energy at cheaper, wholesale costs. Seeing as the company’s investment in Shepherds Flat comes from Google’s business arm, as opposed to its philanthropic organization, Google.org, it’s safe to assume this investment isn’t only for the well being of precious Mother Earth.
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4/17/2011

Sony PlayStation 3 sales hit 50 million worldwide

Sony has sold 50 million PlayStation 3 system since their debut in 2006 - along with 8 million Sony Move controllers that debuted just this past holiday season.

When Sony debuted the PlayStation 3 back in 2006, it was the heavyweight of the console world, packing graphics power and high-definition Blu-ray capabilities into a very expensive package. (Of course, in those days, a PS3 could also run PS2 games—and run Linux. But we digress.) A little over four years later, Sony has announced that worldwide sales of PlayStation 3 systems have topped 50 million units. Moreover, Sony says sales of the PlayStation Move motion controller for the PS3 have surpassed 8 million units worldwide.
Although the PlayStation 3 was initially expected to be a runaway success in the gaming industry—coming on the heels of the top-selling (and still available!) PlayStation 2, PS3 sales got off to a slow start, in part due to the consoles’ initial high price tag but also due to the unexpected runaway success of the Nintendo Wii, which—though underpowered compared to the PS3 and Xbox 360—captured consumers’ imaginations with innovative wireless motion controllers and readily available games that appealed to a broad range of users. Nintendo Wii sales dominated the gaming market for years—Nintendo has sold well over 60 million Wii remotes worldwide—and it’s only in this past holiday season that both Microsoft and Sony responded to Nintendo with motion-sensing systems of their own.
Last month Microsoft said it earned a world record by selling 10 million of its Kinect systems in just a two month period. In comparison, the PlayStation move has sold fewer units over a longer period of time.
Sony also says more than 75 million users have registered PlayStation Network accounts around the world.
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