Passing Wind

If you happen to hear some whooshing sound going by or overhead it may be Amazon making another delivery. No, it’s not part of the online retailer’s publicity machine for drones or driverless cars—it’s Amazon Wind.

The company is in the final stages of testing its 104th wind turbine in the North Carolina Counties of Pasquotank and Perquimans, a $375 million energy project that is going to supply power to its own out-of-state data centers. 

Interestingly, Amazon Wind has been able to sidestep some of the controversy that has swirled around other turbine builders in Coastal North Carolina, which is known as a premier wind energy resource.

Residents’ complaints about flickering sunlight through the blades and the noise they make as they spin, have kept other companies from completing their own projects. However, Amazon’s turbines are smaller, extending only 492 feet from the tip of the blades. 

Whether Amazon or anyone else will be able to build more turbines in this area or any other in the future is—no pun intended—up in the air. The benefits of wind turbines to local municipalities is being questioned by the courts and very angry residents who say their land will lose anywhere form 25 to 40 percent of its value and no one has addressed the health issue.

However, the deals may be too lucrative for local governments and Amazon to pass up. Amazon’s wind farm will reportedly pay $520,000 in taxes in just its first year, and the company will pay $624,000 in landowner lease payments the first year, increasing each year afterward—more than other turbine companies.

But the really good news is that if the grid goes down, Amazon will have enough juice to deliver your juice.