AWS will build 5 more solar farms in Virginia

Public cloud market leader Amazon Web Services (AWS) today said it will build five more solar farms in Virginia to meet the power needs of its data center infrastructure in the state. This builds on the original Amazon Solar Farm announced last year. Dominion Resources will operate AWS’ original Virginia solar farm, and it will do the same for these five new ones.

The new solar farms — in Virginia’s Buckingham, New Kent, Powhatan, Southampton, and Sussex counties — will contribute 180 megawatts (MW) of power, according to a statement.

On top of these solar farms, Amazon has also been setting up wind farms.

AWS has committed to becoming completely reliant on renewable energy. Google, whose Google Cloud Platform competes with AWS, has also been setting up renewable energy projects. And earlier this week, Microsoft, which fields the competing Azure public cloud, announced its biggest wind energy purchase yet — 237 MW.