Amazon builds a 150 MW wind power station to provide its DC with "green" energy

Amazon has signed a 13-year contract with Siemens to create a 150 MW wind power station (wind farm) in the United States. Thus, the company continues to implement the transition to energy derived from renewable sources. Previously, Amazon has pledged to move to 100% provision of "green energy" for several years.

Wind Power Station is called Amazon Wind Farm (Fowler Ridge), and will be located in Benton County, Indiana, USA. The station’s energy will be used to run a local data center that runs Amazon Web Services. By the way, Amazon has previously announced that Tesla batteries will be installed in a data center that serves Amazon Web Services. In DC, Amazon will install a Tesla battery system at 4.8 mWh. In April, the company joined the American Council on Renewable Energy, and also announced participation in the US PREF (US Partnership for Renewable Energy Finance), to ensure interaction with local authorities on the use of renewable energy for cloud providers.

Project participants

In addition to Amazon, Pattern Energy Group is involved in this project, it is an energy company from the United States. Siemens is also a partner, allocating $ 150 million for the construction of the station. The company allocates funds from the special fund Siemens Financial Services (SFS). The company will build 65 wind turbines and install 67 transformer systems.
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According to the partners, the implementation of the plan is without disruption and delays.

Why green energy?

Amazon, as mentioned above, decided to switch to 100% energy supply from renewable sources. This statement was made by the management of the corporation after joining the initiative of Apple, Google, Facebook and some other companies that also made a similar commitment.

In the United States and some other countries, telecommunications giants are often blamed for the fact that DC companies consume a huge amount of "dirty" energy, therefore, companies have a very strong negative pressure on the state of the environment.

Recently, Amazon Web Services Vice President for Infrastructure Projects Jerry Hunter confirmed that the company consumes more and more energy each year. However, Amazon is constantly increasing the share of "green" energy. Now it is announced that during the construction of new facilities, the company will look for ways to use alternative energy sources to provide electricity to such facilities.

Amazon claims that in its "cloudy" DC, the company (optimized in a special way) consumes about 1/8 of the energy consumed by similar equipment in terms of performance of conventional data centers (server blades, etc.).

From January 2016, Amazon Wind Farm will begin producing 500,000 MWh of energy.

Few technical details

The project will use Siemens SWT-2.3-108 wind generators, each of which provides 2.3 MW. The size of the blade - 53 meters.


SWT-2.3-108 generator

The Siemens SWT-2.3-108 turbine is part of the G2 platform, generators of this type are placed on land. Such a wind generator can work in all weather conditions.

The main parts of the generators will be created in Hutchinson, Kansas, Fort Madison, Iowa and Richland, Mississippi.

More information about the company's wind generators can be found here .