Brookfield Asset Management Picks AWS to Boost Renewable Energy Operations
Renewable power investor Brookfield Asset Management picked Amazon Web Serives as a preferred cloud provider to accelerate its digital transformation with cloud computing.
Brookfield migrated its legacy systems to AWS and is using AWS’s analytics, containers, Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning and storage capabilities, as well as AWS’s extensive partner network, to modernize its technology infrastructure and optimize operations.
In addition to its agreement with AWS, Brookfield Renewable, a unit of Brookfield Asset Management and publicly traded renewable power platform, will provide 601.6 MW of clean wind and solar energy capacity to power Amazon’s operations in Europe, North America and India. In total, these projects are expected to generate 1,370 GWh, which is enough to power more than 120,000 U.S. homes per year.
Working with AWS Professional Services, AWS Managed Service Provider (MSP) BDO Lixar, and AWS Partner Databricks, Brookfield Asset Management consolidated 40 petabytes of data in a data lake on AWS to optimize facility operations, increase production output, and improve equipment performance.
Applying AWS machine learning and analytics capabilities to this data helps the company automate key aspects of its operations. These capabilities enable Brookfield to proactively manage complex commercial transactions, improve returns on assets, and reduce operating costs. Brookfield Asset Management also uses Databricks’ Lakehouse Platform on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to provide a central data analytics platform that is increasing operational efficiency and reducing costs across more than 10 internal business organizations (including Trading, Risk, Origination, and Operations).
In addition, Brookfield Asset Management is implementing improved workplace safety technology, collaborating with AWS and AWS Partner Blackline Safety to provide real-time employee safety monitoring at three hydroelectric dam sites in the U.S.
Employees wear Blackline’s G7 wearable safety devices, which rely on Amazon Kinesis (AWS’s service for easily collecting, processing, and analyzing video and data streams in real time) for high-speed streaming data ingestion of location and safety data into the cloud, and Amazon Redshift (AWS’s cloud data warehouse) to detect if an employee is in danger or needs assistance, thereby triggering an alert for supervisors to send help.
The collaboration announced today keeps Amazon on track to power its operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of its original 2030 commitment, and to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. The committed 601.6 MW of power purchase agreements (PPAs) will provide electricity to seven Amazon projects—three in the United States (in Arkansas, Illinois and Mississippi), three in Europe (in Spain, Northern Ireland and Italy), and one of Amazon’s first projects in India.
