SEATTLE – Amazon officials recently announced that its first solar farm-plus-battery energy storage project has become fully operational in the High Desert.
Located in Baldy Mesa near Adelanto, the project is considered one of the largest DC-coupled solar plus storage facilities in California, the company in a press release on Tuesday.
Assembled in rows across a westward stretch of the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County, solar panels at the Baldy Mesa solar farm are turning sunlight into carbon-free energy and sending it into the grid, Amazon officials said.
When the sun stops shining, a football field-sized battery energy storage system (BESS) near the solar panels sends electricity gathered during daylight hours back to the grid. The transitioning to solar and wind power is “one of the fastest ways to help decarbonize electricity grids, but the amount of renewable energy available can vary when the sun isn’t shining,” Amazon officials stated in a press release.
The new solar farm machines that are powered by Amazon Web Services are able to predict when and how the project’s battery unit should charge and discharge energy back to the grid, the company said.
“AI is an important tool that’s already helping our society make the transition to carbon-free energy and address climate change at scale,” said Kara Hurst, Amazon’s vice president of Worldwide Sustainability.
“Amazon has enabled the development of 10 solar energy projects paired with battery energy storage systems to date–representing nearly 1.5 gigawatts (GW) of battery energy storage capacity,” company officials said.
The Amazon projects include Baldy Mesa and also Bellefield near Mojave, the largest planned solar-plus-storage project in the U.S. Amazon also has its first rooftop solar array combined with a battery storage unit, which was installed at Amazon’s San Bernardino Air Hub, Amazon said.
All 10 projects are located in California and Arizona and are helping power Amazon operations, the company stated. These Amazon facilities include fulfillment centers, office buildings, and Amazon’s data centers.
