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?
Wouldn't it be the same difference? They either profit by offsetting costs (selling the energy) or they profit by reducing costs (using the energy). Energy is fungible, right?
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.
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.
I'm going to say never. The energy demands of data centers will be skyrocketing due to increased demand for machine-learning, those GPUs and ultra-multicores will be hungry for decades to come.
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?