SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ:AMZN), today announced five new solar farms across the Commonwealth of Virginia that will bring a total of 180 megawatts (MW) of renewable energy capacity onto the grid before the end of 2017. Amazon Solar Farm US East 2, Amazon Solar Farm US East 3, Amazon Solar Farm US East 4, and Amazon Solar Farm US East 5 are four individual facilities, each with a capacity of 20MW, located in New Kent, Buckingham, Sussex, and Powhatan counties respectively. Amazon Solar Farm US East 6 is a 100MW facility in Southampton County, Virginia. These five new solar farms join the company’s existing project, Amazon Solar Farm US East, an 80MW facility in Accomack County, Virginia which is already in production. Amazon worked with developers Virginia Solar LLC and Community Energy Solar on the projects, and will further collaborate with an affiliate of Richmond, Va.-based Dominion Resources, Inc. (NYSE:D) to own and operate the solar farms long term. Combined, the six solar farms are expected to generate more than 580,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of energy annually, making Amazon in its support of the AWS Cloud the largest corporate backer of solar projects east of the Mississippi River. For more information, go to https://aws.amazon.com/sustainability.
To date, AWS has enabled 10 renewable energy projects in the United States that will deliver a grand total of 2.6 million MWh of energy annually onto the electric grid powering AWS data centers located in the AWS US East (Ohio) and AWS US East (N. Virginia) Regions – enough to power almost 240,000 homes. The projects that are currently producing energy include the 150MW Amazon Wind Farm Fowler Ridge in Indiana and the 80MW Amazon Solar Farm US East in Virginia. The 208MW Amazon Wind Farm US East in North Carolina is on track to begin generating electricity by the end of 2016. In addition to Amazon Solar Farms US East 2 - 6, other projects that will be in production prior to the end of 2017 include the 100MW Amazon Wind Farm US Central and the 189MW Amazon Wind Farm US Central 2 in Ohio.
AWS continues to make progress toward its long-term goal of powering the AWS Cloud with 100 percent renewable energy. Last month, AWS announced it expects to exceed its 2016 goal of 40 percent renewable energy by the end of this year and set a new, near-term goal to be powered by 50 percent renewable energy by the end of 2017. AWS is pursuing a number of initiatives to achieve these goals including enabling renewable energy projects, ongoing innovation in its facilities and equipment to increase energy efficiency, and advocating at the federal and state levels for policies aimed at creating a favorable renewable energy environment, such as the bipartisan HB 1305 in Virginia that incentivizes investment in utility-scale solar energy projects.
“We continue to ramp our sustainability efforts in areas where availability of renewable energy sources is low or proposed projects are stalled, and where the energy contribution goes onto the same electric grid that powers AWS data centers,” said Peter DeSantis, Vice President, Infrastructure, AWS. “By enabling 10 utility scale renewable projects in the US to date, we are well positioned to meet our latest goal of 50 percent renewable energy powering the AWS global infrastructure by the end of 2017. That said, we are nowhere near done. We will continue to make progress toward our 100 percent goal and have many exciting initiatives planned.”
“Solar energy is a central part of the comprehensive renewable energy approach Virginia needs to keep costs low for businesses, families, and taxpayers as we build a new Virginia economy,” said Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe. “I applaud Dominion and Amazon for collaborating in a way that will benefit our economy, our energy mix and our environment. We will continue to support collaborations and innovative approaches to bring low-cost, renewable energy to all corners of the Commonwealth.”
“The expansion of Dominion’s alliance with Amazon is great for Dominion, AWS, and the Commonwealth of Virginia,” said Thomas F. Farrell II, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Dominion. “It helps meet AWS’s renewable needs, it expands Virginia’s clean electric generation fleet, and it creates economic development opportunities in largely rural communities.”
Beyond the sustainability initiatives focused on powering the AWS global infrastructure, Amazon is pursuing several other clean energy and energy efficiency activities across the company. Examples of other projects include Amazon Wind Farm Texas – a 253MW wind farm in Scurry County, Texas – green rooftops, and the District Energy Project that uses recycled energy for heating Amazon offices in Seattle. For more information on Amazon’s sustainability initiatives, visit www.amazon.com/sustainability.
About Amazon Web Services
For 10 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers over 70 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, analytics, mobile, Internet of Things (IoT) and enterprise applications from 38 Availability Zones (AZs) across 14 geographic regions in the U.S., Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and India. AWS services are trusted by more than a million active customers around the world – including the fastest growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies – to power their infrastructure, make them more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit http://aws.amazon.com.
About Amazon
Amazon 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 tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon. For more information, visit www.amazon.com/about.
About Virginia Solar
Virginia Solar is a Richmond, Virginia based developer of utility scale solar projects in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Virginia Solar’s principals have extensive track records in developing and installing thousands of MWs of renewable energy projects throughout the US. This includes the Scott Solar 17MW solar project located in Powhatan Virginia, currently under construction and expected to go online this year. For more information, visit http://www.vasolarllc.com/.
About Community Energy
Since its inception in 1999, Community Energy has developed more than 1,500 megawatts of solar and wind power. With long experience in utility energy marketing, the Company leads the markets in new financing structures, development expertise, and delivery of projects in new markets under new policies, all within its mission to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy at scale. Headquartered in Radnor, Pennsylvania and offices in Boulder, Colorado, Community Energy has a strong presence in both eastern and western renewable energy markets. For more information about Community Energy, please visit www.communityenergysolar.com.
About Dominion
Dominion is one of the nation’s largest producers and transporters of energy, with a portfolio of approximately 26,000 megawatts of generation, 14,400 miles of natural gas transmission, gathering and storage pipeline, and 6,500 miles of electric transmission lines. Dominion operates one of the nation’s largest natural gas storage systems with 1 trillion cubic feet of storage capacity and serves more than 6 million utility and retail energy customers. For more information about Dominion, visit the company’s website at www.dom.com.
