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AWS’ first Auckland data centres are due to come online next year.
Amazon Web Services has bought the right to draw down 51 megawatts of electricity from the power grid from Mercury Energy to power data centres it is building in New Zealand.
The 15-year power deal will allow Amazon’s cloud computing arm to consume the equivalent of about 0.5% of the country’s current total installed generating capacity.
AWS announced in 2021 that it expected to spend $7.5 billion over 15 years building “world-class computing infrastructure” in Auckland.
The company operates data centres around the world that customers can use to develop and host cloud-based software.
Its first Auckland data centres are due to come online next year and AWS said the power right it had bought was more than it would require “at launch”.
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AWS indicated in a statement that the power it had agreed to purchase would be from Mercury Energy’s 103MW Turitea South wind farm in Manawatū.
Mercury committed to build the Turitea South wind farm in 2019, prior to AWS’ decision to expand its cloud computing infrastructure to New Zealand, and it is due to start producing power very shortly.
AWS energy head Ken Haig acknowledged that, physically, the power its data centres would use would come from wherever electricity happened to be generated from, at the time it was consumed.
He also confirmed AWS was buying “firmed” capacity, or the guaranteed right to draw down 51MW from the grid at any time, rather than only when the Turitea South wind farm was generating.
But Haig said AWS’ statement that it was buying power from the wind farm, rather than from just any existing sources of generation, did carry meaning.
“We’ve specifically gone out and looked for an opportunity to invest in a project that has yet to come online,” Haig said.
“That investment that will help – if not in this particular project – additional projects. So Mercury can continue to work on new projects as a result of having us as a guaranteed off-taker.”
AWS said the price it was paying for the power was confidential.
