Google just announced yet another major investment in renewable energy. The company says that it has made a $200 million equity investment in an existing wind farm in Oldham County Texas. The Spinning Spur Wind Farm currently produces about 161 MW and uses 70 Siemens turbines to generate enough power for about 60,000 U.S. homes. EDF Renewable Energy, the current owner of the project, will manage the project and will remain the owner alongside Google.

This is one of Google’s largest investments in renewable energy yet, though it’s trumped by the $280 million the company put into the SolarCity fund in 2011.

EDF itself purchased the wind farm last January from Austin-based Cielo Wind Power for $322 million and finished the project by the end of 2012 in order to qualify for a number of federal incentives that were set to expire on December 31.

As for the company’s reason for today’s investment, Kojo Ako-Asare, Senior Manager, Corporate Finance at Google writes that the company looks “for projects like Spinning Spur because, in addition to creating more renewable energy and strengthening the local economy, they also make for smart investments: they offer attractive returns relative to the risks and allow us to invest in a broad range of assets.”

“EDF Renewable Energy is pleased to engage with an innovative company like Google on this equity financing,” said Jim Peters, Vice President of Project Finance in a statement today. “The partnership between our companies reflects a departure from sourcing investment capital from traditional financial institutions for our renewable energy projects. This transaction provides an opportunity for a leading renewable energy developer to join forces with a leading technology company to create value for both our companies and our respective customers.”

In total, the eleven renewable energy projects Google has invested in are now capable of generating over 2 gigawatts of power, the company says, enough to power about half a million U.S. homes. Google also stressed that four of its projects hit a number of important milestones in the last year. Here is the company’s summary of those:

• The Atlantic Wind Connection received permission to begin permitting, an important step in advancing the construction of the United States’ first offshore backbone electric transmission system (more in this new video).
• Shepherds Flat, one of the world’s largest wind farms with a capacity of 845 MW, became fully operational in October.
• The Ivanpah project, which is more than 75 percent complete and employs 2,000+ people, recently installed its 100,000th heliostat, a kind of mirror (more in this new video).
• Just yesterday (PDF), the fourth and final phase of Recurrent Energy’s 88MW solar installation in Sacramento County, Calif., reached commercial operation.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

TechCrunch is currently experiencing a success problem. We’re growing – fast. And, thanks to you beloved readers, we’ve now got some hiring to do, also fast.

Now while it’s a given that we want the best and brightest folks around on our team, we also want our new folks to bleed green, TechCrunch green. I personally bleed 8-bit TechCrunch green, but I won’t ask everyone to do that – TechCrunch green is just fine. And, with this type of stringent requirement, we thought it might be best to see if you, our readers, might be also interested in working here. After all, you’re the most likely to have the right blood-type (green) – as opposed to the folks that might find us on random websites with names like “Brass Ring” or “Inside Jobs”.

So, come work for the most interesting and influential tech blog in the world, with the cool kids sharks, as my coworker and good friend Alexia Tsotsis likes to say. Seriously, if you want to be in the epicenter of technology startups, innovation, and creativity, TechCrunch is it.

You can find all our (updating) open positions below:

Event Sponsorship Sales Associate

Senior Manager of Audience Development

Conference Program Chair, Engadget/AOL Tech

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Earlier today Google released the full report of the FCC’s investigation into the collection of  “payload data” from open Wi-Fi networks — aka passwords, email and search history from open networks — that its fleet of Street View cars obtained between 2008 and April 2010. An earlier and heavily redacted version of the report was released on April 15 but today’s version only redacted the names of individuals.

Though the report found no violation of any wrong doing by the company, the FCC did fine Google $25,000 for obstructing the investigation, which was presumably the outcome of Google refusing to show the FCC what the data being collected entailed because it might have shown that the company broke privacy and wiretapping laws. Google says any obstruction was result of the FCC dragging out the investigation. Interestingly enough, the report did reveal that the data harvesting was not the act of a rogue engineer and that said engineer notified the Street View team of what was going on.

(Wait. What? Google knew this was going on! It gets even better.)

Except that those members of the team told the FCC that they had no idea it was going on even though the engineer in question sent documentation of the work being done to the entire Street View team in October of 2006. The document in question had been pre-approved by a senior manager before it had been written.

From the report:

In interviews and declarations, managers of the Street View project and other Google employees who worked on the project told the Bureau they did not read Engineer Doe’s design document. A senior manager of Street View said he “pre-approved” the design document before it was written. One engineer remembered receiving the design document but did not recall any reference to the collection of payload data.

So how did Google spin this to the media? It said the data mining was “inadvertent” and that Google now has stricter privacy controls than in the past. Oh and the company hopes the release of the full report would allow them to “put this matter” in the rear view mirror.

Crazy, right? Or maybe not! Discuss.

Correction: April 28, 2012 9:46PM PT

An excerpt from the report has been added regarding the pre-approval of a document sent out by “Engineer Doe” to the Street View team that detailed the work being done and included the fact that Google would be collecting such data.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook hired a few engineers this week, according to its LinkedIn feed, and then also looks to have hired some engineers from posts now removed from its Careers Page. Other notable posts included the removal of Lead Security Counsel and Academic Relations Manager.

New hires per LinkedIn and Other Sources:

• John Liang, Software Engineer – formerly Senior Manager R&D at VMware.
• Mark Uyeda, Recruiter Compliance Administrator – previously the Manager at American Multi Cinema.
• Michael Rood, Analyst, Product Analytics – was Data Analyst at Nielsen Online.
• Margaryta Skrypachova, Software Engineer – previously a Software Engineer Intern at Facebook.

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook