Amazon Solar Farm US East Will Be Virginia’s Largest Solar Farm,
Expected to Produce Approximately 170,000 MWh of Energy Annually
SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun. 10, 2015--
Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:AMZN),
today announced that it has teamed with Community Energy, Inc. to
support the construction and operation of an 80 megawatt (MW) solar farm
in Accomack County, Virginia, called Amazon Solar Farm US East. This new
solar farm is expected to start generating approximately 170,000
megawatt hours (MWh) of solar power annually as early as October 2016 –
or the equivalent of that used by approximately 15,000 US homes1 in
a year. Amazon Solar Farm US East will be the largest solar farm in the
state of Virginia, with all energy generated delivered into the
electrical grids that supply both current and future AWS Cloud
datacenters. For more information, go to http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainable-energy/.
In November 2014, AWS shared its long-term commitment to achieve 100
percent renewable energy usage for the global AWS infrastructure
footprint. As of April 2015, AWS announced that approximately 25 percent2
of the power consumed by its global infrastructure comes from renewable
energy sources with an interim goal of increasing that percentage to at
least 40 percent by the end of 2016. The Power Purchase Agreement (PPA)
for Amazon Solar Farm US East follows a similar PPA for Amazon Wind Farm
(Fowler Ridge) in Benton County, Indiana, that was announced in January
2015 and is expected to generate approximately 500,000 MWh of wind power
annually. Both represent key steps toward meeting these goals.
“We continue to make significant progress towards our long-term
commitment to power the global AWS infrastructure with 100 percent
renewable energy,” said Jerry Hunter, Vice President of Infrastructure
at Amazon Web Services. “Amazon Solar Farm US East – the second PPA that
will serve both existing and planned AWS datacenters in the central and
eastern US – has the added benefit of working to increase the
availability of renewable energy in the Commonwealth of Virginia.”
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe commented, “Amazon’s new solar project
will create good jobs on the Eastern Shore and generate more clean,
renewable energy to fuel the new Virginia economy. I look forward to
working with Amazon and Accomack to get this project online as we
continue our efforts to make Virginia a global leader in the renewable
energy sector.”
Community Energy is a pioneer in developing renewable energy with a long
history in solar and wind energy. Community’s CEO, Brent Alderfer, said,
“We are pleased to work with Amazon Web Services to build the largest
solar farm in Virginia and one of the largest east of the
Mississippi. This project, which wouldn’t have been possible without
AWS’ leadership, helps accelerate the commercialization and deployment
of solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies at scale in Virginia.”
About Amazon Web Services
Launched in 2006, Amazon Web Services 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 U.S., 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 to
innovate quickly, lower IT costs and scale applications globally. To
learn more about AWS, visit http://aws.amazon.com.
About Amazon
Amazon.com opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995. The company is
guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor
focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and
long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized
recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct
Publishing, Kindle, Fire phone, Fire tablets, and Fire TV are some of
the products and services pioneered by Amazon.
1 In 2012, the average annual electricity consumption for a
U.S. residential utility customer was 10,837 kWh, an average of 903
kilowatt-hours (kWh) per month. http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=97&t=3
2 AWS considers this to mean electric power generated from
naturally replenished resources, which are delivered into the electrical
grids that supply our datacenters.
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Source: Amazon Web Services, Inc.
Amazon.com, Inc.
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