Amazon announced 14 new renewable energy projects in the U.S., Canada, Finland and Spain to advance its ambitious goal to power 100% of company activities with renewable energy by 2025 — five years ahead of the original target of 2030. The new projects bring Amazon’s total renewable energy investments to date to 10 GW of electricity production capacity — enough to power 2.5 million U.S. homes. Amazon is now the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy in the U.S. and the world.
The latest utility-scale solar and wind projects will supply renewable energy for Amazon’s corporate offices, fulfillment centers and Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers that support millions of customers globally. These projects will also help Amazon meet its commitment to produce enough renewable energy to cover the electricity used by all Echo devices in use. These new projects support hundreds of jobs while providing hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in local communities.
“We’re driving hard to fulfill The Climate Pledge — our commitment to reach net-zero carbon by 2040, 10 years ahead of the Paris Agreement,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “Our investments in wind and solar energy in the U.S. and around the world send a signal that investing in green technologies is the right thing to do for the planet and citizens—as well as for the long-term success of businesses of all sizes across all industries everywhere.”
Amazon will now have a total of 232 renewable energy projects globally, including 85 utility-scale wind and solar projects and 147 solar rooftops on facilities and stores worldwide. The 14 new wind and solar projects in the U.S., Canada, Finland and Spain include:
- New projects across the U.S.: The 11 U.S.-based projects announced today include Amazon’s first solar projects in Arkansas, Mississippi and Pennsylvania, and additional projects in Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio. In total, Amazon has enabled more than 6 GW of renewable energy in the U.S. through 54 projects.
- Amazon’s largest renewable energy project in Canada: Amazon’s second renewable energy project in Alberta is a 375-MW solar farm—which is also the largest in the country. When it comes online in 2022, the solar farm will bring Amazon’s capacity in Canada to more than 1 million MWh, enough to power more than 100,000 Canadian homes.
- Amazon’s first renewable energy project in Finland: Amazon’s first project in Finland is a 52-MW wind farm located near the country’s west coast. The project is expected to begin producing energy in 2022.
- Additional investments in Spain: Amazon’s fifth solar project in Spain will generate 152 MW when it begins contributing power to the grid in 2023, bringing total capacity in the country to more than 520 MW.
“Amazon’s commitment to clean energy is highly commendable, and it is the type of investment that we need to see more of to meet the world’s critical energy and climate needs,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of SEIA. “It is becoming increasingly clear that corporations such as Amazon see solar and other renewable resources as the path forward to meet their energy and business needs, and we stand ready to support Amazon and other companies of all sizes in their decisions to go solar.”
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“These projects will also help Amazon meet its commitment to produce enough renewable energy to cover the electricity used by all Echo devices in use. These new projects support hundreds of jobs while providing hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in local communities.”
What this means, is that Amazon has determined buying into their own renewable energy projects, be it wind or solar PV generation can offset 100% of their daily energy needs, but, say with a roof top solar PV array on a company roof of 1MWp or more and energy storage, this particular system may represent maybe 25 to 30% of the entire operations power demands. IF Amazon plays their 30% system right by using large on site energy storage, they can also, time shift energy use and reduce demand charges. It’s these demand charges that can add 50% cost to a monthly electric bill.
Those folks at the retail ratepayer end of the electricity use system, can see those same results in being able to shove more power into a house energy storage system during the “duck curve” of the solar PV generation day around 9 AM to 2PM each day, use less solar PV to run the house during the day and “interactively” store this excess when most folks are working and shift that load using energy storage to offset the cost increases of TOU rate spiking, which is usually from 4 PM to 9 PM every night. When one averages out what (really) happens in their daily energy use in their homes, one will find an average of from around 1.5kWh to 2.5kWh over a 24 hour period, (averaged) over the year. That’s 36kWh/day to 60kWh/day. Using a conservative estimate of 4 sun hours a day, it would take from 9kWp to 15kWp solar array to meet average daily energy needs. In some places folks do get into 3 sun hour days and others year around they are in 5 to 6 sun hour days. This suggests 40kWh of energy storage and this is about 4 TESLA power walls.