As the country’s plunged into its latest round of load shedding, Amazon Web Services’ servers based in the Northern Cape begin receiving renewable power from its new solar plant. The plant was recently completed and has a capacity of 10MW.
Don’t get too excited yet, though. The shiny new renewable energy plant was constructed to generate up to 28,000MWh of power per year for the US-based company’s local server farms. In addition, it’s in line with South Africa’s 2030 renewable energy goals, according to the company.
The amount of power it’s generating could easily power up to 8,000 South African homes in a year.
Amazon’s investing in our desert
“The project is a single-axis tracking plant consisting of over 24,000 bifacial solar modules covering an area of 20 hectares in the Northern Cape, where solar is a valuable energy resource,” Business Insider reports.
The panels are mobile and will track the sun’s movements during the day, as well as capture reflected light from below.
“Amazon is committed to working with governments and utility suppliers around the world to help bring more new renewable energy projects online, and we’re honoured to be able to work with the Department of Minerals and Energy, the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (NERSA), and Eskom to help deliver a new model for renewable energy generation in South Africa,” said Nat Sahlstrom, director of AWS Energy according to BI.