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Introducing Amazon Wind Farm Texas
- dqv 10y agoStop trying to hoard the air! Serious question - as of right now, does Amazon have wind farms to reduce their own costs or do they plan on making a profit by selling the energy to consumers?
- mtmail 10y agoLincoln Clean Energy owns and operates the wind farm. Amazon is in a long-term contract to purchase 90% of the energy produced. It's open what happens to the remaining 10%. I'd say Lincoln Clean Energy sells those and any energy Amazon doesn't need to the grid.
- prewett 10y agoIf this is true, the article is pretty disingenuous. It reads like Amazon is building the wind farm, look how dedicated we are to renewable energy, we're investing actual money. If someone else is building it with their own money, and Amazon is simply buying the energy they produce, that's kind of a big difference.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoWouldn't it be the same difference? They either profit by offsetting costs (selling the energy) or they profit by reducing costs (using the energy). Energy is fungible, right?
- woodchuck64 10y agoI'm going to say never. The energy demands of data centers will be skyrocketing due to increased demand for machine-learning, those GPUs and ultra-multicores will be hungry for decades to come.
- tonyedgecombe 10y agoIt could just be a hedge against future taxes on fossil fuels which seem inevitable if we are going to meet the Paris commitments on climate change.
- johnm1019 10y agoAre these wind farms located near data centers and such use the power directly? Or do they dump into the grid and sell it as power then claim all their power usage is renewable because it is "offset"?
- ianlevesque 10y agoWhy would that be a problem?
- Dylan16807 10y agoIs there a flaw in treating electricity as fungible in this case? What matters is the amount of carbon that would be produced without Amazon, vs. the amount produced including Amazon.
- michaelt 10y agoIt impacts how interesting the article is. If they were together there could be a tech angle - like how this was going to insulate their data centres from problems with the grid, or how they were going to shed load when the wind wasn't blowing, or something like that. Otherwise it sounds like AWS and Amazon Wind Power could basically be two unrelated companies.
- new_hackers 10y agoperhaps AWS as a whole has a reasonable constant electric load. The price per MWh fluctuates during "on-peak" and "off-peak" hours. The price really goes up when you accidentally need more power during peak demand. I'm wondering if wind power isn't an effort to decrease the price they pay on the open market for peak power, or to at least recoup some of those costs.
- mtmail 10y agoThe press release itself reads "Amazon will purchase about 90% of the power generated by the wind farm." so I assume the primary purpose is their data centers.
- daniel_levine 10y agoCan't wait for Amazon Energy... Utility-scale renewable energy for all
- tonyedgecombe 10y agoNo doubt bundled with Amazon Prime.
- regularfry 10y agoFrom the press release: Amazon today announced “Amazon Wind Farm Texas,” a new 253-megawatt (MW) wind farm in Scurry County, Texas, that will generate 1,000,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of wind energy annually Seems optimistic. Rule of thumb is that onshore wind generates 30% of its plate rating. That's 660GHw, not 1000, for a 253MW plant. Still a nice, impressive number, just seems over-cooked.
- brianwawok 10y agoIt perhaps Texas better than average? 30% seems too round to really be across all areas of the country.
- regularfry 10y agoYeah, that's not altogether unlikely. Kinda hoping someone more locally-versed will chime in.
- throwaway7645 10y agoNot sure of the exact figures, but whether or not the wind farm is in a constrained area or not generally determines if they can generate full out or if they will be capped at a lower level to keep from overloading the transmission grid.
- windchick 10y agoWe are seeing capacity factors well over 45% in Panhandle now. ERCOT rated the various windy areas of the state back in 2006. Scurry Co. was 10th or 14th if I remember correctly. Not as high cap fac as Amarillo and other areas north of Lubbock. But CREZ Panhandle is already constrained due to the nature of putting lines in the middle of nowhere with no load and no inertia. Scurry Co is on the other side of the constraint, so good move on Amazon's part. Great location with respect to wind resource and transmission access and deliverability.
- greeneggs 10y agoFor 2015 the average across the country was 32.5% for wind. [1] Texas appears to be several percentage points above the average, and newer plants often are better than old plants (if they have similar sites). Here is state data from 2011-2012 [2], with a handy map [3]. It looks like Scurry County might be in a good part of Texas. In principle, the data for 2015 is available here [4], although one would have to process it. [1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_6_07_b https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cf... [2] http://www.windaction.org/posts/37255-u-s-average-annual-capacity-factors-by-project-and-state http://www.windaction.org/posts/37255-u-s-average-annual-cap... [3] http://s3.amazonaws.com/windaction/attachments/1962/US-WINDmap(1).jpg http://s3.amazonaws.com/windaction/attachments/1962/US-WINDm... [4] http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia923/ http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia923/
- achow 10y agoSeems that in a single swipe Amazon would more than double the total USA’s wind generation capacity when this goes into production in 2017. A really fantastic achievement (or am I missing something in the data?). Total US wind energy in 2015: 73,992 megawatts [1] Amazon’s Scurry County Texas capacity: 1 million megawatts [1] http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/7-Charts-That-Show-Wind-Power-is-Surging-in-the-US-and-Abroad http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/7-Charts-That-Sh... Edit.. From the replies it seems it would be at best ~0.3% of total wind generation capacity in USA.
- dmclain 10y agoThey listed MWh/y which is a pretty strange unit. The farm is 253 MW, so not a significant percentage of total US generation. Source: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2202113 http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-ne...
- Reason077 10y agoNothing strange at all about MWh/year. A MWh is just 1000 kWh, which is a very standard unit of energy. With wind farms it makes more sense to talk about it's production in MWh rather than it's capacity in MW. The actual energy produced by a 253 MW array will vary significantly based on where it is sited, etc.
- tlb 10y agohours/year (= 1/8765.76) is a strange factor by which to multiply a perfectly good SI unit (MW).
- dgemm 10y agoObjectively it is strange, but it is the norm in that industry.
- Reason077 10y agoThe watt (and hence kW and MW) are measurements of power, not energy. kWh (and MWh) are common, internationally accepted units for measuring energy. Wind (and solar) energy production tends to vary seasonally, so it makes sense to use a year rather than some other time unit when discussing how much energy these things can produce.
- mark_l_watson 10y agoIt seems to me that the long term value of wind farms is locations with a lot of wind at night, to keep generating electricity when solar systems shuts down for the night. This helps solve the energy storage problem.
- windchick 10y agoThere will be a few hour lull after Texas solar goes dark and before night wind kicks in. In Texas, all of our wind is night peaking with the Gulf Coast having a significantly better curve for servicing ERCOT day load. So storage will play a very big role in ERCOT as we move more towards renewables.
- thr0waway1239 10y agoNo big deal. I knew it was only a matter of time, since it was already announced on Parks and Rec a while back. :-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFKoGtgg6Mo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFKoGtgg6Mo
- imglorp 10y agoOilman T. Boone Pickens almost made a big investment in Texas wind in 2008. Could be he missed the boat. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pickens-plan-for-huge-wind-farm-blows-away/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pickens-plan-for-huge-wind-farm-...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- samsnelling 10y agoPickens Plan actually did invest in huge wind farms. Not sure about in Texas, but Oklahoma is littered with his windmills.
- electricEmu 10y agoDon't forget part of Pickens' Plan included water rights from West Texas to Dallas under those wind farms. If I remember correctly, there were some disagreements and TBP wasn't able to complete the water pipeline portion. He didn't miss the boat. His master plan of connecting West Texas water to Dallas for marked up resale fell through. https://gigaom.com/2008/06/20/t-boone-pickens-taps-water-wind-for-land-grab/ https://gigaom.com/2008/06/20/t-boone-pickens-taps-water-win...
- windchick 10y agoT Boone was too far ahead of the transmission infrastructure with his plan. The SPP lines were not capable of moving much wind (pre ITP build-out) and the ERCOT CREZ plans were just a twinkle in our eyes at the time. We came up with ERCOT CREZ prelim plans about 2006 but it took until 2013/14 to get em built and energized. So, he launched his boat too early, he did not miss the boat.
- weitzj 10y agoIs there any energy market in the US where you can offer/buy "positive/negative operating reserve"? Probably more related to AWS: I could imagine Amazon getting in the energy market and trading negative operating reserve. The scenario would be: - offer cheaper AWS compute instances on the AWS spot market - sell the excess energy consumption as negative operating reserve on the energy market
- hossbeast 10y agoWhat is negative operating reserve?
- weitzj 10y agoIt is not easy to store energy. So in a power grid, producers (powerplants, windfarm...) offer how much energy they can put into the grid for a certain time of day, whereas consumers, e.g. your energy provider, which manages many households, or the industry go to the energy market and say: "I need this much energy at this time of day". So now you have to make sure this supply demand evens out. Say for example there is more demand than actual supply, then positive operating reserve has to be put into the power grid (e.g. turn up your gas power plant). For these smaller fluctuations of supply demand you have to have something which scales quickly. A nuclear power plant is probably not so easy to scale and the output is rather constant. Now the other case: There is not enough demand and too much energy is produced in the power grid. The energy needs to go somewhere. So now you have to find a consumer, who can quickly scale up it's demand. This might be a flour mill or here it would be AWS. And for offering that you can consume an energy X in the next hour, you get paid by the Department of Energy, whose incentive is to keep the grid stable. So AWS would monitor the energy market and would have to know, how fast their customers would turn up more Spot instances, once AWS offers them a lower price. Then they would know how fast they can scale their energy demand in the data center and make an offer on the energy market that they can consume an extra X MWh in the next 30 minutes. So fast scaling up demand for consuming energy from the power grid would be "negative operating reserve". If you are just a consumer and have a consistent demand, this would not be "negative operating reserve"
- peteretep 10y agoIn 20 years I'm looking forward to buying Amazon Citizenship.
- ch4s3 10y agoWouldn't it be more of a membership?
- sandGorgon 10y agoyearly reserved citizenship cost .... or spot citizenship (They can kick you out of the country any time when someone is willing to pay more taxes)
- djhworld 10y ago> yearly reserved citizenship cost a.k.a Prime membership.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y agoSign up for the Amazon Space Marines! Service guarantees citizenship. Would you like to know more?
- gcatalfamo 10y agoYes, until they send you off to Klendathu for duty...
- mtgx 10y agoMore like "Sign-up to be a cog in our Space Mechanical Turk."
- antod 10y agoNow developers can fight bugs literally.
- kmfrk 10y agoComes free with Prime.
- orliesaurus 10y agoI wonder why they went for Wind farms over anything on the sea or solar powered
- karma_vaccum123 10y agoThey mention their existing solar capacity in the article. Presumably this will also grow over time. Doing anything at sea would surely be 10x as complicated and expensive...Texas has wind and open space and roads.
- whamlastxmas 10y agoSolar is more suited for 24 hour power, which Amazon needs. It also costs less than solar, but needs maintenance, but if you're vertical integrated like Amazon then having your own low cost maintenance team is probably not an issue.
- wierdaaron 10y agoThere's probably also a bit of "Apple and Google have solar and fuel cell covered, where can we make an impact?" involved. Not a bad thing. We need to be investing and experimenting with lots of different alternative energy strategies. I would like to see someone do a large scale implementation of marine current power (underwater turbines spun by currents like the Gulf Stream).
- wierdaaron 10y agoThere's probably also a bit of "Apple and Google have solar and fuel cell covered, where can we make an impact?" involved. Not a bad thing. We need to be investing and experimenting with lots of different alternative energy strategies. I would like to see someone do a large scale implementation of marine current power (underwater turbines spun by currents like the Gulf Stream).
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- 0verD0ses 10y agoI doubt this will offset the huge boost in emissions which will come with Amazon's 'Flex' service, which will see products delivered fast via horribly inefficient passenger cars, as opposed to relatively efficient vans and trucks.
- stcredzero 10y agoOne person delivering to many people will be more efficient than many people making the trip to the store in their own cars.
- 0verD0ses 10y agoYes that is true, but why go backwards?
- kevan 10y agoBecause the current van and truck experience for me is a tracking update at 6am saying "Your package is out for delivery" and then it actually gets delivered sometime in the next 12 hours. As a customer that's a crappy experience. Hopefully flex will push everyone to up their game with regards to delivery experience. If vans and trucks are more efficient then they should win out in the long run because they can operate at lower margins. Disclaimer: I work with Amazon, not on the Flex team. My words don't represent the company.
- WalterBright 10y ago> sometime in the next 12 hours [...] a crappy experience How perspective changes. I remember when ordering anything meant "4-6 weeks for delivery".
- gtremper 10y agoThe 12 hours here refers to the delivery window on the delivery day, not the time to ship the package. Though the total delivery time is certainly much less than 4-6 weeks.
- 0verD0ses 10y agoHopefully they can cut down on excessive packaging at the same time: packagingnews.co.uk/news/environment/amazon-customers-criticise-excessive-packaging-21-12-2015
- barney54 10y agoWill this wind facility actually be connected to an Amazon facility, or is Amazon doing this to collect the wind production tax credit?
- kevinthew 10y agoelectricity is a very liquid market, they're probably selling this generation into ercot, buying it in offset in whatever grid they operate on. they could have some sort of physical exchange in place to act as the offset (i.e. they sell power to a generation company in Texas, they buy same offsetting amount from same generation entity in California/MISO/wherever)
- lucio 10y agoHonest Question: Is this a profitable endeavour? or it's just for the positive PR?