Amazon Web Services Announces Wind Farm To Power Data Centres

Amazon Web Services is set to build a 150 megawatt wind farm in a US state to help the firm reach its renewable energy quotas in its future data centre operations.

Dubbed the Amazon Web Services Wind Farm (Fowler Ridge), the wind farm will generate up to 500,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of wind power annually by January 2016. The wind farm will be located in Benton County, Indiana.

AWS has teamed with Pattern Energy Group LP (Pattern Development) to support the construction.

100 percent renewable energy

It was November last year when Amazon committed to achieving 100 percent renewable energy usage for its global infrastructure footprint. The firm was partially prompted to make this move under pressure from Greenpeace, and although no target date was set for this goal, the wind farm is a promising step.

Greenpeace said: “Amazon’s data centres consume massive amounts of electricity, and they’re proliferating incredibly quickly, which is why today’s news is so crucial and promising.

“A renewably powered Amazon Web Services could be a catalyst for clean energy growth around the world, a hero in the effort to build the modern economy, powered by 100% renewable energy, that is so urgently needed to address climate change.”

AWS introduced its first carbon-neutral region – US West (Oregon) – in 2011. Today, AWS offers customers three AWS Regions that are carbon-neutral – US West (Oregon), EU (Frankfurt), and AWS GovCloud (US).

“Amazon Web Services Wind Farm (Fowler Ridge) will bring a new source of clean energy to the electric grid where we currently operate a large number of datacenters and have ongoing expansion plans to support our growing customer base,” said Jerry Hunter, Vice President of Infrastructure at Amazon Web Services.

“This PPA helps to increase the renewable energy used to power our infrastructure in the US and is one of many sustainability activities and renewable energy projects for powering our datacenters that we currently have in the works.”

Pattern Development’s CEO, Mike Garland said: “We are excited to be working with Amazon Web Services and we commend the Company for its commitment to sustainability and its continued pioneering and leadership in cloud computing. We look forward to working with AWS as it progresses towards its goal of using 100 percent renewable energy.”

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