Amazon To Develop Its Largest Wind Farm To Date
September 23rd, 2016 by Joshua S Hill
Originally published on CleanTechies.
Amazon announced the development of the Amazon Wind Farm Texas earlier this month, a new 253 MW wind farm that will be the company’s largest wind project to date.
The new Amazon Wind Farm Texas continues a growing portfolio of wind and solar farms developed by Amazon to power its data centers and operations around the United States, and the world. Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company’s data services arm, has committed to achieving 100% renewable energy usage for its global infrastructure footprint. Previous projects have been announced and developed in Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia. For the Indiana project, Amazon Wind Farm Fowler Ridge went live on January 1 of this year. Amazon’s renewable energy capacity delivers energy to the electrical grids which in turn supply both current and future Amazon Web Services Cloud data centers.
Amazon Wind Farm Texas will be made up of more than 100 wind turbines, generating a maximum capacity of 253 MW, or 1,000,000 MWh of wind energy each year — that’s enough energy to power almost 90,000 US homes. Scheduled to be completed in late 2017, the new wind farm is the company’s largest wind project to date, and in combination with Amazon’s four other wind farms, will generate more than 2.6 million MWh of renewable energy each year — enough to power more than 240,000 US homes, and at the least the Cloud data centers in each of those states.
“We’re excited to work with the community in Scurry County and Lincoln Clean Energy to generate 1,000,000 MWh of renewable energy each year from West Texas,” said Kara Hurst, director of sustainability, Amazon. “Amazon Wind Farm Texas is our largest renewable energy project to date and the newest milestone in our long-term sustainability efforts across the company.”
Amazon have teamed up with Lincoln Clean Energy, a leading developer of wind and solar projects across the US, which will construct, own, and operate the Amazon Wind Farm Texas — and from whom Amazon will purchase approximately 90% of the power generated.
“We applaud Amazon’s leadership in directly purchasing renewable power,” added Declan Flanagan, founder and CEO of Lincoln Clean Energy. “Direct purchasing by large, long-term thinking customers like Amazon has quickly become a key driver of the transition to renewable power across the US.”
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