About two hours south of Los Angeles in the desert town of Romoland, Calif., sits a 2,000-square-foot building made of sheet metal. Gigantic solar arrays flank each side of the structure that looks out on a dirt road, punctuated by a single sign that says “Burro Crossing Next Mile.”

It would be hard to guess that inside there are more than 300 servers hosting Web sites for some 12,000 clients worldwide.

It's not a typical location for a hosting service provider's data center. But Affordable Internet Services Online (AISO) isn't your typical hosting service provider.

Instead of drawing energy from traditional power sources, AISO is one of a growing number of hosting firms that is thinking green when it comes to power consumption. And it's one of just a very few that, despite running businesses that depend on always-on service, actually produces all the energy it needs on-site.

"We wanted to generate our own electricity and be more self-sufficient," says Phil Nail, co-founder of AISO.

AISO launched in 1997 with the aim of moving to solar energy. "We watched the kind of equipment we put in to make sure we had the lowest power consumption possible," Nail says.

Click to see: Wider Net:the greening of Web hosts

In 2001, AISO invested $100,000 in the solar panels. Two huge arrays - which contain dozens of 2-foot-square solar panels and are each about 10 feet wide and 70 feet long - generate about 60 kilowatts of electricity per day, enough to power the company's operations, Nail says. The energy from the solar panels is fed into battery banks, which then connect to servers and other equipment via an APC UPS system that keeps the energy supply steady.