Amazon to produce renewable electricity in South Africa

[Jamie McKane]

Amazon to produce renewable electricity in South Africa

US tech giant Amazon says it will generate its own electricity in South Africa, through solar and wind projects, to supply its data centres.

It comes as state power producer, Eskom again warned of a high probability of load-shedding amid declining capacity.

 

[wingnut771]

What will they do on a rainy windless day during loadshedding?

 

[chickenbeef]

What will they do on a rainy windless day during loadshedding?

The same thing they do everyday pinky, try to take over the world.

 

[Johnatan56]

What will they do on a rainy windless day during loadshedding?

Use Eskom or generators (Eskom majority of the time, load shedding kicks in they'll use generators to supplement).
Going solar and wind is probably cheaper for Amazon than paying Eskom, and it's part of all of the big (inc. of tech) companies plans for emission reductions.

 

[ToxicBunny]

Use Eskom or generators (Eskom majority of the time, load shedding kicks in they'll use generators to supplement).
Going solar and wind is probably cheaper for Amazon than paying Eskom, and it's part of all of the big (inc. of tech) companies plans for emission reductions.

Beyond just the plan to reduce emissions, them producing renewables to power their data centers will give them dual power feeds so allow them to certify their data centers in the country at a higher tier as well.

 

[grok]

Gone are the days when we invited overseas industries to come invest & give people jobs with our abundance of cheap electricity.

Now overseas companies must roll their own, or do like we do, go without since Eskom has grown fat & useless.

All due to the incompetent & corrupt ANC, but hey lets vote for them again.. TIA!

 

[Rocket-Boy]

Its a smart move on Amazon's part. Electricity costs in datacentres are pretty high, so if they can bring that down *and* make it a stable supply then they will be in a great position.

 

[ConfusedR]

What will they do on a rainy windless day during loadshedding?

Run from stored power in batteries

 

[wingnut771]

Run from stored power in batteries

Which will be dead in an hour.

 

[yogidabear]

Its for DC's so they have way more than an hour backup, makes perfect sense. The cost of mitigating / rolling Level X load shedding is totally justified. Like Rocket-Boy said

 

[johnjm]

Which will be dead in an hour.

You don’t know much about power storage.

 

[wingnut771]

You don’t know much about power storage.

I was being dramatic. Anyway, if they are talking about 4GW of generation, then they have to have 4000MWh of batteries for 1 hour. That's a lot of batteries. Now plan for 8 hours per day and 3 days of bad generation, so 4000x8x3 = 96000MWh battery combined between all the locations. What does that even look like?

 

[Lupus]

I was being dramatic. Anyway, if they are talking about 4GW of generation, then they have to have 4000MWh of batteries for 1 hour. That's a lot of batteries. Now plan for 8 hours per day and 3 days of bad generation, so 4000x8x3 = 96000MWh battery combined between all the locations. What does that even look like?

4Gw of power? That's Medupi

 

[johnjm]

4Gw of power? That's Medupi

Or about 3.4 lightning strikes per doc brown.

My initial comment stands.

 

[Lupus]

Or about 3.4 lightning strikes per doc brown.

My initial comment stands.

Great scott! Than we can go back to 1988

 

[Polymathic]

Bonus is that they can claim this is an offset to their carbon footprint and get tax breaks in Europe. (I think)

 

[wingnut771]

4Gw of power? That's Medupi

 

[ToxicBunny]

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