
Introducing Amazon Wind Farm Texas - based2
https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/ps9c2vfu7fcm4t6?ref_=aa_lc_0&pf_rd_r=6F894AHA5W2FQZBQTYZB&pf_rd_p=3fffa90a-17f6-470a-82ad-414308e970a2
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regularfry
From 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
It perhaps Texas better than average? 30% seems too round to really be across
all areas of the country.

~~~
regularfry
Yeah, that's not altogether unlikely. Kinda hoping someone more locally-versed
will chime in.

~~~
windchick
We 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.

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weitzj
Is 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
What is negative operating reserve?

~~~
weitzj
It 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"

~~~
hossbeast
Awesome, thanks

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johnm1019
Are 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"?

~~~
msisk6
No, this is out in west Texas where wind is plentiful along with cheap land.

Nearly all wind and solar farms inject energy into the grid just like any
other generator. In an open energy market like ERCOT (where this wind farm is
located) there's a market where energy is traded.

If they inject "X" units of energy into the grid and pull out the same "X"
units all is good. If not (the usual case since generation and demand need to
equal 100% at all times) there are rules to govern the buying and selling of
energy all generators ("market participants") follow.

Suffice it to say, grid management in an open energy market is complicated. If
you really want to know more about the rules you can read more here:
[http://ercot.com/mktrules](http://ercot.com/mktrules)

~~~
whamlastxmas
I would like to take a moment to appreciate that we seemingly have a pretty
open, fair, and working regulatory system to make this possible. I am sure
it's not perfect, but that you can do this at all is pretty cool.

~~~
pm90
One could argue that the possibility of having such structures in place is
exactly what allows such a market to exist. In fact, the fair enforcement of
laws and the viability of the laws themselves is perhaps one of the strongest
foundations of progress in the developed nations.

------
peteretep
In 20 years I'm looking forward to buying Amazon Citizenship.

~~~
dave_sullivan
Amazon Citizenship:

1) They setup an offshore corporation for you in a low tax jurisdiction and
give you payment processors to take checks and credit cards over the internet.
Every few years, they move all of these corps en masse to lower tax
jurisdictions, if any. More efficient competition among tax regimes. Amazon
will file all pertinent taxes and paperwork and connects to your quickbooks to
make that even easier.

2) They provide a phone number to an Amazon Embassy hotline. If you are ever
captured by anyone and local authorities cannot help, call this number and
Amazon PR will lobby for your rapid release and return to safety through
aggressive social media outreach. They will also setup a gofundme page for you
to cover legal expenses, etc.

3) Give up your American citizenship (if any) so you no longer have to pay
taxes in the US while not living or working in the US.

4) Amazon World Citizen Passport

So you can work, maybe get some physical/political help if that's needed, and
travel freely. What else is there?

The cost? 5% of your income.

Traditional governments would ideally end up selling physical living permits,
allowing you to live physically in a given country/area/union, keeping the
rest of their tax laws intact for anyone still incorporating or working within
the given country. IE, no existing laws really need to change. The price of
these permits ends up being a function of location desirability, access to
services, and relative guarantees of physical safety. The job of governments
becomes to improve each of these variables.

~~~
knowaveragejoe
Bring on the Snow Crash-esque future.

~~~
FullMtlAlcoholc
It's already here.

Just look @ Snapchat HQ. There are homeless people sleeping literally right
outside the main entrance. The epitome of high-tech, low life.

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0verD0ses
I 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
One person delivering to many people will be more efficient than many people
making the trip to the store in their own cars.

~~~
0verD0ses
Yes that is true, but why go backwards?

~~~
kevan
Because 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
> sometime in the next 12 hours [...] a crappy experience

How perspective changes. I remember when ordering anything meant "4-6 weeks
for delivery".

~~~
gtremper
The 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.

~~~
WalterBright
The 4-6 weeks is a 2 week delivery window! (No tracking numbers then, either.)

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barney54
Will this wind facility actually be connected to an Amazon facility, or is
Amazon doing this to collect the wind production tax credit?

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imglorp
Oilman 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-...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pickens-plan-for-huge-wind-farm-blows-
away/)

~~~
electricEmu
Don'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-
win...](https://gigaom.com/2008/06/20/t-boone-pickens-taps-water-wind-for-
land-grab/)

------
mark_l_watson
It 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
There 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.

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daniel_levine
Can't wait for Amazon Energy... Utility-scale renewable energy for all

~~~
tonyedgecombe
No doubt bundled with Amazon Prime.

------
dqv
Stop 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
Lincoln 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
If 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.

------
kevinthew
electricity 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
Honest Question: Is this a profitable endeavour? or it's just for the positive
PR?

------
orliesaurus
I wonder why they went for Wind farms over anything on the sea or solar
powered

~~~
wierdaaron
There'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).

------
thr0waway1239
No 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)

------
0verD0ses
Hopefully they can cut down on excessive packaging at the same time:
packagingnews.co.uk/news/environment/amazon-customers-criticise-excessive-
packaging-21-12-2015

------
achow
Seems 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-
Sh...](http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/7-Charts-That-Show-Wind-
Power-is-Surging-in-the-US-and-Abroad)

Edit..

From the replies it seems it would be at best ~0.3% of total wind generation
capacity in USA.

~~~
dmclain
They 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-
ne...](http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-
newsArticle&ID=2202113)

~~~
Reason077
Nothing 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
hours/year (= 1/8765.76) is a strange factor by which to multiply a perfectly
good SI unit (MW).

~~~
dgemm
Objectively it is strange, but it is the norm in that industry.

