A guide to Web hosting companies that use solar energy to power their services.
With more and more Websites going online every day and adding more bells and whistles, Web hosting companies need more and more energy to keep their customers up and running. In fact, a recent
study estimated that energy consumption by data centers around the world doubled between 2000 and 2005, and now amounts to the output of 14 power plants.
So what’s an energy-conscious, green-minded Web hosting customer to do? How about choosing a hosting company that uses renewable energy to power its operations? A growing number of Web hosts are moving in that direction, including these 9 solar-powered companies:
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Affordable Internet Services Online
Based in Romoland, California, AISO is a 10-year-old Web hosting company whose data center is powered by 120 solar panels. AISO also uses solar tubes to light its offices naturally, and is now designing a green roof topped with drought-resistant plants for its data center. The company also hosted the Live Earth concert Websites.
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Athenaeum
In 2005, the U.K.-based Athenaeum launched Ecological Hosting, which is powered by a solar-energy data center in California. Owner-operators Jamie Simpson and Sue Rhodes are also strict vegetarians and avid recyclers.
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Atypica
Atypica completed its conversion to grid-tied solar power in February of 2005. The 10-year-old company, located in Scotia, New York, offers application development, email and hosting services.
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Eco Web Design
Based in the U.K., Eco Web Design uses solar-powered Web servers to provide three types of hosting plans, from entry-level to professional.
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Greenest Host
Launched just this past summer, Greenest Host is powered fully by solar power. The company, located in San Diego, California, offers a variety of Web hosting plans along with email and e-commerce services.
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Green WebHost
Another U.K. based company that uses a solar-powered data center in California, Green WebHost also operates Solar WebHost (http://solarwebhost.net/) and plants a tree on behalf of every customer.
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Planetmind Internetworks
While most of Planetmind’s services are run by 100-percent wind power, the Netherlands, Colorado-based company has also added a low-powered Web server running completely on solar power. It offers a limited number of hosting accounts for its solar server.
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Solar Host
A subsidiary of Floppynet Ltd., Solar Host uses energy from a solar-powered data center in California. The U.K.-based company offers email, Web hosting, and Website management services.
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ThinkHost
Founded in 1999 and based in Portland, Oregon, ThinkHost switched to 100-percent solar/wind power in last 2005. Most of its team members also telecommute to reduce their environmental impact. The company offers Web hosting, e-commerce and other services.
October 20th, 2007 at 5:40 am
Interesting but here in UK they wouldn’t get much solar power! I’m not even sure that the sun is still up there. LOL
April 2nd, 2008 at 4:18 pm
I do NOT at all recommend AISO.net! I have had outage after outage, and their customer service is deplorable!
May 29th, 2008 at 10:07 am
I don’t recommend Thinkhost.com. They seem like great people, but, I have had too many outages, both for maintenance and failed systems. They don’t count maintenance outages in there uptime. A small point one might miss. For us, our experience has been they achieve at best 97.8% uptime. That is just not acceptable for us.
September 10th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
There is another solar webhosting company that I use for my website. http://www.imountain.com. They used to be called Iron Mountain Hosting but they sent us an email saying they’re just iMountain.com solar powered Hosting now or something like that.
imountain.com owns a solar powered datacenter. Reliability is very good as they’re a premium hosting provider. The best part of them is their support though, they helped me with a bunch of stuff they didn’t have to like debugging my website.
February 26th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
I am looking around for a green host and I am trying to be very careful when looking at the claims of hosting businesses.
For example, look at the pictures iMountain.com provides. Now, I’m not saying that they are doing anything wrong or misleading people, but, I’m sorry, they just don’t look right. Where are the electrical connections between each panel? Under them? But, isn’t that concrete? If so, wouldn’t the panels not be flat? Also, unless you are on the equator, you must mount the panels at an angle to get the most power from them. These panels are pointed straight up. Finally, how do you know the panels are currently at the location?
Please, please be careful when choosing!!!