RES
Americas developed and constructed the 343 megawatt Lower Snake River
Wind Farm. The project, which began operating in 2012, is owned by Puget
Sound Energy and is Washington State’s largest wind farm.
From the time you wake up in the morning until you rest your weary eyes at night, you do things that consume power.
BZZZZ. Turn off the alarm. Turn on the lights. Brew some coffee. Turn
on the TV. Recharge your phone. Turn on the computer. Turn on the AC or
heat. Surf the Internet. Heat some leftovers in the microwave. Watch
more TV. Do laundry. Run the dishwasher. Or watch more TV. Turn off the
lights -- except for the one on the porch. ZZZZ.
All those things add up.
Luckily, if your appliances, coffeemakers and lights depend on the
Texas power grid, there’s going to be 110 megawatts (MW) more clean,
renewable energy flowing into that grid by the end of 2015, generated by
55 brand-new wind turbines that will make up the Keechi Wind Farm
project. That’s enough to juice up 55,000 homes at peak production.
Microsoft has committed to a 20-year power purchase agreement with
RES Americas to buy 100 percent of the electricity generated from the
soon-to-be-built Keechi Wind Farm Project. It’s Microsoft’s latest
investment in renewable energy and is just one of several innovative
projects and approaches the company has pursued in the past few years.
“We have a long standing ambition to move in the direction of
sourcing more clean energy as a company, so over the last few years
we’ve increasingly purchased something called RECs – renewable energy
credits (more than 2.3 billion kWh globally) – and so this is an
opportunity to go to the next stage and invest directly in green
energy,” says Rob Bernard, Microsoft’s chief environmental strategist.
He sees Keechi as a “moment in our journey” that includes an increased
focus and acceleration in the direction the sustainable energy strategy
the company has pursued over the last several years.
With projects focusing on increasing energy efficiency, renewable energy and carbon-offset projects funded in part by an
internal carbon fee, Microsoft has become an example to others to be pro-active when it comes to clean energy use and investment.
“When influential companies such as Microsoft sign up to buy wind
power, it sends a strong signal on the importance of taking meaningful
action on sustainability,” says Susan Reilly, president and CEO of RES
Americas, the energy developer behind the Keechi project, and
chair-elect of the board of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA).
“By signing a contract to buy power from the Keechi Wind project,
Microsoft is making the financing, construction, and operation of this
110 megawatt project possible. To be clear: it would not have happened
otherwise. The Texas electrical grid is like a pool, and Microsoft is
adding clean, green wind power to that pool.”
RES Americas developed and constructed the 99 megawatt Central Plains Wind Farm, which is located near Leoti, Kansas.
It takes about one megawatt (MW) of energy to power 500 Texas homes
on the same electric grid as Microsoft’s San Antonio datacenter. In an
area 70 miles northwest of Ft. Worth, construction begins in December to
build the Keechi Wind project. This power purchase agreement represents
a sizable investment in the wind energy sector in Texas – which has a
strong wind resource and has invested in building out its transmission
infrastructure to improve integration of these resources into the
broader grid. Texas has more installed wind capacity than any other U.S.
state, with a total of 12.2 gigawatts of capacity. Wind energy is the
source of 9.2 percent of all electricity generated in Texas.
“All of the electricity we consume is from the power grid, through
local utilities, which includes a mix generation resources including
hydro, natural gas and wind,” says Brian Janous, director of energy
strategy at Microsoft’s Global Foundation Services. “This project gives
us a stake in putting more renewable power in the grid. We’re not having
this power delivered directly to us. We’re going to continue to consume
power as we always have for our buildings and datacenters -- but we’re
affecting the mix of generation, adding 110 MW of green power that
wouldn’t have been there otherwise and displacing carbon fuels. We’re
driving change in the generation mix on the grid in Texas.”
Microsoft is driving change in many other ways, too.
This past year Microsoft began building a pilot datacenter in
Cheyenne, Wyoming that will run completely independent of the grid from
energy generated from biogas, a byproduct of a nearby water treatment
plant. Another datacenter in Dublin, Ireland, has implemented a
thermodynamic cooling process that happens without loss or gain of heat,
which reduces energy costs per megawatt by up to 30 percent. Microsoft
is also retrofitting existing datacenters to be more efficient with
harder-working, lower-energy servers, compressor energy reduction and
custom light-emitting diode (LED) lighting.
An internal carbon fee -- which Microsoft charges to business groups
based on their output of carbon, primarily through electricity and air
travel – helps fund these projects and the Keechi Wind project. The fee
is the cornerstone of Microsoft’s commitment to carbon neutrality. The
funds generated from the carbon fee are used for investing in
energy efficiency projects, carbon offsets and for the direct purchase of renewable energy.
Microsoft offset more than 300,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions
through that growing portfolio of innovative carbon-offset projects in
2013, and purchased 2.3 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of renewable energy
in 2013— more than twice the amount bought the previous year. This
year, the Environmental Protection Agency recognized Microsoft as the
second largest purchaser of green power in the U.S. And when Microsoft
pledged to become carbon neutral in fiscal year 2013, the National
Resources Defense Council (NRDC)
validated that the company made good on its promise.
Bernard says Microsoft has spent a little more than two years
rethinking its own infrastructure – the “smart buildings” concept
captured in the “
88 Acres”
story. “Let’s use ourselves as an experiment to see what’s possible. We
spent time and focused on our campus. Now we’re taking what we’ve
learned from our own experiences to
Seattle and
CityNext. Now we’re going to the next level -- can we help our customers save energy as well?”
One way customers can reduce their energy use is by transferring from
on-premise installations to cloud computing, Bernard says. At the very
least, that transfer causes a 30 percent energy reduction, up to a best
case scenario of 90 percent, depending on an organization’s size,
efficiency and what product lines they’re using.
“Public support for renewable energy is strong and growing. Consumers
are more aware than ever of the harmful effects of carbon pollution and
the role renewable energy can play in reducing these impacts. They want
the electricity that powers their lives to be green,” Reilly says. “RES
Americas and other companies have long been selling power from wind
projects to electric utilities. Selling directly to companies that use a
lot of energy, such as Microsoft, is an important trend in the
industry, and we expect to see more deals like this.”
The 149 megawatt Halkirk Wind
Farm, which RES Canada constructed in 2012, is the largest wind project
in the Canadian province of Alberta.
The physical manifestation of this deal will start appearing in
December. Like a lot of things in Texas, these wind turbines are big.
Looming nearly 312 feet in the air – that’s the same as a 29-story
high-rise building – one rotor on these wind turbines measures 328 feet
in length – a few stories higher than the shaft it’ll rotate around.
Each turbine will generate about 2 MW apiece.
And because each part has to be trucked in and assembled there, it’s
going to take the better part of 2014 to get those 55 wind turbines
going. But even before all 55 are all operational, they’ll start
generating power.
“If you look at the company strategy overall, it’s across three
areas: demonstrate responsible environmental leadership, enable energy
efficiency both in and through the use of information technology, and
accelerate scientific development,” Bernard says. “So when we look at
something like Keechi, in the context of that framework, it’s part of a
portfolio of activities that are happening in our datacenter division
aimed at improving efficiency, lessening our power supply, and greening
it when possible.”
For more information on the Keechi Wind Farm project and Microsoft’s ongoing clean energy efforts, check out “
Microsoft Signing Long-Term Deal to Buy Wind Energy in Texas,” "
Microsoft announces new investment to power a greener cloud" and this
infographic.
