Google announced another big renewable energy deal on Wednesday, purchasing a $200 million stake in a wind farm in west Texas. The 161 megawatt Spinning Spur Wind Project in Oldham County, Texas, generates enough energy to power more than 60,000 homes, the search giant said. Its 70 turbines are located in a particularly windy section of the Texas Panhandle and began spinning full-time in the last few weeks of 2012.



Google's massive data servers rack up enormous electricity bills. Greenpeace, the environmental activist group, estimates that Google's eight current and planned server farms could consume 476 megawatts of electricity if they were operating at full capacity. That's enough to power all the homes in San Diego. Google has said that it doesn't use nearly that much energy, because its servers are never operating at full capacity.