Amazon Teases Massive Wind Farm in Texas
Amazon has made its largest renewable energy project to date: a massive wind farm in Texas.
When it opens, the 253-megawatt (MW) wind farm in Scurry County, Texas, is expected to generate 1,000,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of wind energy annually, or enough to power nearly 90,000 US homes. It will boast more than 100 turbines, each with a rotor diameter twice as long as the wingspan of a Boeing 747, Amazon says
Amazon contracted with wind and solar project developer Lincoln Clean Energy, which will construct, own, and operate the new wind farm. Amazon will then purchase about 90 percent of the power generated by it.
The company previously announced large wind and solar farms in Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia, but this new one in Texas will be its biggest yet. The solar farms deliver energy to the electrical grids that power current and future Amazon Web Services Cloud data centers. Together, the five projects will generate more than 2.6 million MWh of renewable energy each year, or enough to power more than 240,000 US homes.
As of April 2015, approximately 25 percent of the power consumed by Amazon Web Services' global infrastructure came from renewable energy sources. In the long term, Amazon is hoping to increase that to 100 percent.
"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," Lincoln Clean Energy Founder and CEO Declan Flanagan said in a statement.
Amazon will have some company in Texas; Facebook last year announced plans to open a new wind-powered data center in Fort Worth.
This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.
