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Google gloats over solar success

The search giant shares its running tab of solar power production since turning on its panels.

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Candace Lombardi
In a software-driven world, it's easy to forget about the nuts and bolts. Whether it's cars, robots, personal gadgetry or industrial machines, Candace Lombardi examines the moving parts that keep our world rotating. A journalist who divides her time between the United States and the United Kingdom, Lombardi has written about technology for the sites of The New York Times, CNET, USA Today, MSN, ZDNet, Silicon.com, and GameSpot. She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET.
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Candace Lombardi

Google has produced enough electricity from its headquarters in the last four days to watch about 251,073 hours of television on a flat screen.

The news comes from Google's site dedicated to letting folks know exactly how many kilowatt-hours its solar project is paying out.

Google
Aerial view of the solar panels covering several of Google's buildings in Mountain View, Calif. Google

The search giant has covered the roofs of eight buildings and two carports at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters with solar panels in an effort to build the largest solar panel installation of any corporate campus in the U.S.

On Monday, the system was turned on and Google has been monitoring its success rate. The average seems to be about 10,000 kilowatt-hours per day, according to Google's solar graph.

That equals 8,347 coffee makers running for an hour, 6,257 dishwasher runs, 3,642 loads of laundry washed and dried, or 41,737 alarm clocks running for 24 hours, going by U.S. Department of Energy standards.

Google said it's producing enough electricity for each solar paneled building to cover about 30 percent of its demands.