I joked that Google is an Electric company in an old post. If Apple was an Electric company would it be Apple Electric or Apple Power? Apple made the news making progress on its solar farm, and now has added another 200 acres.

Hickory Daily Record reports on the latest real estate transaction.

CONOVER, NC — California-based technology giant Apple has spent nearly $3 million to buy more than 200 acres of property in Catawba County for another solar farm.

It’s another step in Apple’s pledge to have its Maiden data center running on 100 percent renewable energy by the end of the year.

Some of the concerns with the big data center expansion in Oregon is the future growth of data centers there could be 10% of the energy use.

If ever a state was destined to become a data center Mecca it is Oregon. As the author of the article points out they have a temperate climate, cheap power, no sales tax or property tax for data centers located in state-designated enterprise zones. All these elements combine to provide an explanation for the plethora of “Greetings From Oregon” postcards emanating from the likes of Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon and other data center operators. So far so good. However, after much sleuthing and analysis the good citizens of the area have uncovered a heretofore hidden truth—these things use one heck of a lot of electricity. So much electricity in fact that current estimates indicate, and I quote, “they (data centers) could devour nearly 10 percent of all the Northwest’s energy by 2030”.

But, with Apple being an electric company the protests of impacting the local energy grid will soon be a mute point.