While firms from China rule solar panel manufacture, Apple has chosen to partner with an US company to help build its upcoming solar farm in North Carolina. A renewable energy company, Leaf Solar Power located at Lake Worth, Fla., is working with Apple on a its solar farm that will control its $1 billion data center, as per to sources with the current project. Leaf Solar's contribution in Apple's North Carolina solar project may be the company's biggest and most worthwhile partnership so far, as Leaf's official page of LinkedIn notes that it focuses in "small" commercial and residential projects in South Florida.
Previous month, local permits unveiled that Apple is scheduling to develop a solar farm from its huge data center in Maiden, N.C. Details for the project have not yet been unveiled, as a permit got by Apple simply relates to erosion command. More information on the solar farm will shell when Apple decides to officially apply for a construction permit - a process that could moreover expose the full area of Leaf Solar's association with the project.
The firm is also stated to have co-developed solar farms in Tennessee, and also supposedly received a demand for plan for a 17-MW solar farm in Arizona. The progress by Apple to conduct dealing with a U.S.-located solar firm comes at a time when manufacture of solar panels has been progressively sent abroad. In particular, solar panel production has deeply shifted to China over the previous two years.