Renewables notched one other win as Amazon signed contracts to purchase 476 megawatts of wind and photo voltaic on the Iberian Peninsula.
The facility buy agreements with multinational utility Iberdrola ought to assist Amazon feed new knowledge facilities it has deliberate within the area. Final Could, the corporate stated it might make investments $17 billion in infrastructure tasks, together with knowledge facilities, in Spain.
Amazon’s energy invoice has been hovering recently because it provides knowledge facilities to cope with rising demand for AI and cloud companies.
One of many tasks that Amazon is shopping for into — the Tâmega wind farm — is being constructed alongside a large hydroelectric dam system in Portugal. The complicated consists of a complete of three dams, one in every of which is an 880-megawatt pumped-storage dam.
Pumped-storage amenities have two reservoirs, one greater in elevation, one decrease. When energy is required, water is launched from the higher reservoir to spin generators. When there’s extra energy, huge pumps shift water from the decrease reservoir to the higher one. Pumped storage is, in impact, a large battery.
The 274-megawatts of wind generators being put in at Tâmega will feed energy to the grid by means of the hydro complicated’s present connection, and when there’s extra, it may be used to pump water to the higher reservoir. Such hybrid installations guarantee energy may be fed to the grid constantly from in any other case intermittent renewable assets like wind and photo voltaic.
Amazon can be shopping for a portion of the ability from extra typical wind and photo voltaic crops in northwestern Spain. Final 12 months, the corporate was the most important purchaser of renewable energy.
Tech firms have been shopping for energy from renewable tasks at a reasonably constant tempo, pushed partly by how shortly and inexpensively wind, photo voltaic, and batteries may be put in. Final month, Meta stated that it had signed two giant offers for solar energy, and Microsoft and Google beforehand introduced that they have been every backing multi-billion greenback renewable investments.