Weather Guard Lightning Tech

Big Moves in Renewables: Amazon, Adani, and IPS Drive Growth

Allen, Joel, and Phil discuss Amazon building a major new wind farm in Brazil to power its data centers and operations. Plus India’s Adani Green Energy has secured financing for an enormous 17 GW hybrid solar and wind facility. This project aims to leverage Adani’s investments in turbine and solar manufacturing. And IPS has acquired Wind Solutions in North Carolina to expand its wind turbine service capabilities.

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Allen Hall: I’m Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I’m here with the founder and CEO of Intelstor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum, and this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at Intelstor. If you need actionable information about renewable projects or technologies, check out Intelstor at intelstor.com.

Amazon is spurring clean energy growth in Brazil with its first major wind farm in the country. The tech giant announced a 50 megawatt project that will generate over 250 gigawatt hours of renewable power annually. The 92 million dollar wind farm will help supply Amazon’s data centers and operations in the region.

This is really interesting because Amazon, when they put these new data centers in, no matter where they are in the world, they’re trying to create renewable energy to power them, and that can be pretty complicated at times.

Philip Totaro: It can, but it’s interesting because Brazil’s a market where, even though they have recently very low PPAs if they’re guaranteeing the power offtake themselves, then it’s less of a consideration for them to have to go into, these competitive auctions and tenders for power offtake.

It’s your CapEx is pretty cheap, there’s plenty of turbine supply down there, as, as long as you want it, Vestas. But there, there’s plenty of opportunity for them to be able to do this. And obviously co locating your power generation with your load center slash data center is going to be a good move.

Brazil’s a market where you’ve got exceptionally high. Capacity factors for most of the capacity that’s installed there. So it’s it’s something that I think makes sense for me.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. It’s an interesting market down there too. Cause in Brazil, we know that the average wind turbine installed about three megawatts.

So the majority of their fleet is pretty new. And you’re seeing a lot of growth down there, right? A lot of ISPs, a lot of we have, we talk with our friends with Arthwind there about all the things that they do and the parts of the market that they know, and they’re seeing growth in the Brazilian market.

Amazon’s going down there, they’re going to install a 50 megawatt project. While it makes sense for them, the resources to maintain that project from an operations and maintenance position are starting to mature in the country as well.

Allen Hall: India’s renewable energy ambitions are charging ahead with Adani Green Energy securing over 1. 3 billion dollars in financing for a massive clean power complex. The funds will back the initial development of Adani’s planned 17 gigawatt. Hybrid wind and solar park is one of the largest project finance deals ever in Asia. And as we’re discussing COP 28, one of those items is what India is doing in terms of getting to renewable energy.

Wow, Joel, this is amazing. 17 gigawatts is a Big project.

Joel Saxum: Yeah when I saw that I had to reread it. 17 gigawatts. It’s wait a second 17 megawatt. No, that’s not that big a wind… Wait a second 17 gigawatts, right? The biggest wind farm Yeah, the biggest wind farm in the United States for scale right now is about 1 gigawatt just under 1 gigawatt there is some in the pipeline that are like 3 gigawatts and whatnot, but to go from the largest pipeline Like hybrid solar plant and renewable solar plant at three gigawatts.

You’re talking almost a six times increase in size for this one project. Fantastic undertaking by Adani, but as Phil can share with us, Adani’s making moves.

Philip Totaro: Absolutely. This one project alone gives them the opportunity to really leverage what they’ve been trying to establish in terms of their wind turbine manufacturing capacity with their new 5. 2 megawatt turbine that’s now been certified. They’ve also got some solar panel and cell manufacturing capacity that they have implemented in India as well that they’re looking to expand upon both for the domestic market as well as regional exports into Sri Lanka and some other countries.

But they have even bigger ambitions beyond this. They actually also announced recently in conjunction with COP28 that they’re putting, they’re going to commit 22 billion dollars to expand their portfolio, and in particular the portfolio of projects in India. For a 17 gigawatt project 22 billion dollars is gonna cover most, but not all of that.

And it looks like they’re now, with this 1. 38 billion that they’ve raised in debt financing, they’re starting to get other partners involved that are going to be necessary for them to. To be able to grow and expand this pipeline.

Allen Hall: Integrated Power Services, a provider of power equipment and management systems, is bolstering its wind offerings with the acquisition of North Carolina based Wind Solutions.

Wind Solutions specializes in wind turbine upgrades and components like yaw systems. Its customer base spans wind farm owner, operators, and utilities across North America. Phil, this is interesting because these two companies are complementary to one another, but they’re right next door. One in North Carolina, one in South Carolina.

A place where there’s essentially no wind turbines at the moment. But yet, a lot of the technology in wind is coming out of those, Atlantic States.

Philip Totaro: It’s again, like we’ve talked about on, the Uptime podcast and on Newsflash before, there are companies that are making it a point to either kind of vertically integrate or partner with other companies that might have seemed outside the normal scope for IPS to partner with an independent service provider and refurb company.

Is I think important for IPS because they’re seeing a growing demand and this is an area of business where, they want to be able to provide refurbishment services on their coupling, slip rings, et cetera, everything that IPS supplies. So I think it’s a good move strategically and it’s probably not the last one that either IPS could make, or you could also see other supply chain companies potentially getting kind of formal partnerships or other M& A deals established with independent service provider companies.

Joel Saxum: Another thing that they’re taking advantage of here that and not having to fight with the Midwest, because you think normally, hey, when company going to be the Midwest wind factory somewhere along there in the supply chain corridor, basically, they’re not fighting for workforce, right? South Carolina, North Carolina, that whole area that workforce is not dedicated to, the wind industry, or we’re trying to grab technicians are trying to do this.

They have their own workforce. They have their own people, their own educational system and stuff over there. That’s actually a good move on their part as well.

Big Moves in Renewables: Amazon, Adani, and IPS Drive Growth