US-based e-commerce company Amazon and Avangrid, a company of the Iberdrola Group, have expanded their partnership in the US with a new power purchase agreement (PPA).
The PPA allows Amazon to procure renewable electricity from Avangrid’s 98.4MW wind facility in Gilliam County, Oregon, US.
The wind farm, dubbed Amazon Wind Farm Oregon-Leaning Juniper IIA, is a repowering project that will significantly extend the life of the existing wind farm and make it work more efficiently.
It will feature 40 turbines, support about 200 jobs during construction, and produce adequate energy to power 22,800 homes each year.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) Energy Strategy head Abhishek Sharma said: “Amazon is excited to announce our first utility-scale renewable energy project in Oregon.
“The project adds to the 2GW of renewable energy capacity Amazon has already enabled across the western US grid.
“This has contributed to Amazon being the world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy for four years running and will help Amazon remain on a path to utilizing 100% renewable energy for the electricity powering its operations by 2025.”
Avangrid said that the wind farm, through its Community Sponsorship Programme, has contributed to local libraries, pre-schools, and firefighters.
The repowering of the project through Amazon’s investment will help continue the work.
It has also paid more than $11m in local property taxes, supporting public services like education and safety, and these tax contributions will continue after repowering.
In addition to the PPA, Avangrid has executed contracts to recycle all the turbine blades in the project when they are decommissioned after a lifetime.
The contracts are estimated to save more than 1,000 tons of mass from landfills.
Avangrid CEO Pedro Azagra said: “With projects like this, we are not only supporting Amazon’s climate goals but creating jobs and contributing to local communities.”
“Repowering represents a tremendous opportunity for Avangrid to capitalize on benefits from the Inflation Reduction Act. Avangrid’s large existing onshore wind fleet will enable many more repowerings like this one over the next decade.
“In doing so, we take advantage of improving technologies to generate more renewable power more efficiently and extend the positive impact these projects deliver locally.”
