As published in Toledo Business Journal - January 1, 2016
Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company, has contracted with EDP Renewables to construct and operate a 100 megawatt (MW) wind farm in Paulding County, Ohio that will be called Amazon Wind Farm US Central. This new wind farm is expected to start generating approximately 320,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of wind energy annually beginning in May 2017, or enough to power more than 29,000 US homes in a year. The construction cost of the new wind farm is estimated at $200M. The energy generated will be delivered into the electrical grid that supplies both current and future AWS Cloud data centers.
Greenwich Wind Farm located in central Ohio
Paulding County economic development director Jerry Zielke said he is excited about the EDP Amazon Wind Farm project. “It’s awesome,” he said. “Having Amazon a part of this project. It is fantastic that we’re going to have additional towers going up in 2016. It’s a fantastic opportunity for the county for capital investments.
“Paulding County has seen tremendous positive impacts from the development of wind farms projects built in the past by Iberdrola Renewables and EDP Renewables North America LLC in our county. These wind farms have provided needed funding resource for local school districts, local townships, local libraries, the Vantage Career Center, and other County governmental agencies.”
The Paulding County wind farm will support new Amazon investments in central Ohio. The company is planning to build a number of large facilities in the Columbus area. It is expected to spend approximately $1.1 billion on the construction of three new data centers that will have employment of over 2,000. The data centers will be located in Hilliard, Dublin, and New Albany, Ohio. In addition, Amazon plans to build two fulfillment centers in Etna and Obetz, Ohio. Each of the data and fulfillment centers are located in suburbs of Columbus. Energy from the Paulding wind farm will not be used directly by the new facilities, but will be placed on the electric grid to replace electricity used by the new operations.
“Our previously announced renewable energy projects put AWS on track to surpass our goal of 40 percent renewable energy globally by the end of 2016. This latest project, Amazon Wind Farm US Central, pushes our renewable energy percentage ever higher, according to a company spokesperson.”
In November 2014, AWS shared its long-term commitment to achieve 100% renewable energy usage for the global AWS infrastructure footprint. In April 2015, AWS announced that approximately 25% of the power consumed by its global infrastructure was from renewable energy sources with a goal of increasing that percentage to at least 40% by the end of 2016. As part of its renewable energy push, AWS continues to work on ways to increase the energy efficiency of its facilities and equipment, and to launch projects aimed at increasing the availability of renewable energy resources on the electrical grid that supplies power to current and future AWS Cloud data centers in Virginia and Ohio, according to the company.
Blue Creek Wind Farm in Van Wert County
Specifically, in January 2015, Amazon announced a renewable project with the Amazon Wind Farm (Fowler Ridge) in Benton County, Indiana, which is expected to generate 500,000 MWh of wind power annually. This is the equivalent of the amount of energy that is used by approximately 46,000 US homes in a year.
In April 2015, Amazon announced a pilot of Tesla’s energy storage batteries that are designed to help bridge the gap between intermittent production, from sources like wind, and the data center’s constant power demand. Also in April 2015, AWS joined the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) and the US Partnership for Renewable Energy Finance (US PREF) to work with State and federal policymakers and other stakeholders to enable more renewable energy opportunities for cloud providers. In June 2015, the company announced Amazon Solar Farm US East in Virginia, which is expected to generate 170,000 MWh of solar power annually. This is the equivalent of the amount of energy used by 15,000 US homes each year. In July 2015, AWS announced Amazon Wind Farm US East in North Carolina, which is expected to generate more than 670,000 MWh of energy annually. This amount of energy would power the equivalent of 61,000 homes in the US. When completed, the project will be the first utility-scale wind farm in the state of North Carolina.
Now with Amazon Wind Farm US Central, Amazon’s renewable projects will be responsible for delivering more than 1.6 million MWh of additional renewable energy into electric grids across the central and eastern US, or roughly the equivalent amount of energy required to power 150,000 US homes, according to the company.
“We continue to pursue projects that help to develop more renewable energy sources to the grids that power AWS data centers and bring us closer to achieving our long-term goal of powering our global infrastructure with 100% renewable energy,” said Jerry Hunter, vice president of infrastructure at Amazon Web Services. “Our previously announced renewable energy projects put AWS on track to surpass our goal of 40% renewable energy globally by the end of 2016. This latest project, Amazon Wind Farm US Central, pushes our renewable energy percentage ever higher.”
“Ohio continues to benefit from the strong relationship that JobsOhio and its business development partners have fostered with Amazon,” said John Minor, president and chief investment officer of JobsOhio. “Building upon news from earlier this year that AWS would develop cloud data centers in Ohio, we are excited that AWS is making another significant investment here and look forward to partnering with Amazon as it continues to grow in our state.”
According to the company, EDP Renewables is a global leader in the renewable energy sector and the fourth largest producer of wind power in the world. The company operates in 12 markets around the world (Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Spain, United States, France, Italy, Poland, Portugal, United Kingdom, Romania, and Mexico).
“We are very excited to be working with AWS on this important project in Ohio,” said João Manso Neto, CEO of EDP Renewables. “The fact that businesses such as AWS are playing such an active part in renewable energy projects is a very clear indicator that the future lies in additional generation of this type of energy. The support for this project shows the industry’s confidence in our delivery capacity, experience, and know-how.”
Launched in 2006, Amazon Web Services, according to the company, offers a robust, fully featured technology infrastructure platform in the cloud comprised of a broad set of compute, storage, database, analytics, application, and deployment services from datacenter locations in the US, Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, Ireland, Japan, and Singapore. More than a million customers, including fast-growing startups, large enterprises, and government agencies across 190 countries, rely on AWS services, according to the company, to innovate quickly, lower IT costs, and scale applications globally.