Amazon Back at Iberdrola for More Offshore Wind Power

Business & Finance

March 20, 2024, by Adnan Memija

Iberdrola and Amazon have expanded their long-term global clean power partnership by signing a power purchase agreement (PPA) for 159 MW of the 1.4 GW East Anglia Three offshore wind farm in the UK, equivalent to 700 GWh of clean electricity per year.

The two companies announced in March 2023 a new global collaboration to support the development of large-scale renewable energy projects and leverage cloud computing technology to enhance digitalisation in the energy transition.

Two of Iberdrola’s previously announced offshore wind farms in Germany, Baltic Eagle and Windanker, will provide Amazon with 319 MW of clean energy, which is equivalent to the annual electricity needs of more than 314,000 European homes.

Amazon has also signed PPAs with Iberdrola to enable projects in the US, Germany, and elsewhere in the UK. Over the life of these PPAs, the company has contracted 54,000 GWh of renewable energy from Iberdrola.

According to Iberdrola, capacity from East Anglia Three will support Amazon’s commitment to match all the electricity powering its operations with 100 per cent renewable energy by 2025.

The new agreement was announced at the Haizea Wind Group facility in Bilbao where the manufacturing of 50 monopiles is underway. From there, the units will be shipped to the UK and used to support the Siemens Gamesa 14+ MW wind turbines.

Located 69 kilometres off the coast of Suffolk, the 1.4 GW offshore wind farm will be powered by 95 wind turbines.

When East Anglia Three becomes fully operational, expected in 2026, the project will generate enough clean electricity to power the equivalent of 1.3 million British homes, said Iberdrola.

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In addition to the signing of the PPA, Iberdrola and Amazon launched on 20 March the global “Journey to Cloud” programme, by further migrating Iberdrola’s operations to the Cloud and leveraging AWS’s High-Performance Computing services big data services, Iberdrola said.

Projects already delivered include the use of the Cloud to halve the time it takes to run complex weather simulations, as well as Amazon Sagemaker Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning services to maximise the efficiency of renewable energy assets worldwide, said the Spanish company.

“Today, two global leaders join forces in an agreement that will mean more energy independence, more local jobs and lower emissions on both sides of the Atlantic. We are excited to partner with Amazon in the field of generative AI and big data, allowing our business to innovate and scale at speed,” Ignacio Galán, Executive Chairman of Iberdrola.