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Amazon took solar rooftops offline last year after fires, explosions


Amazon shut down solar systems at all of its US facilities in 2021 following a series of fires and explosions, including one at its Fresno warehouse in 2020.

Fresno . Fire Department

On the afternoon of April 14, 2020, dozens of firefighters arrived at a Amazon warehouse in Fresno, California, as thick plumes of smoke rose from the roof of the 880,000-square-foot warehouse.

About 220 solar panels and other equipment at the facility, known as FAT1, were damaged by the triple alarm fire, which was caused by “an unknown electrical event in the energy system”. Roof mounted sun,” Leland Wilding, Fresno’s fire investigator, wrote in an incident report.

Over a year later, about 60 firefighters were called to an even larger Amazon facility in Perryville, Maryland, to extinguish two alarms, local news store report.

In recent months, at least four other Amazon fulfillment centers have caught fire or experienced fire problems due to a failure in their solar generation system, according to internal company documents seen by CNBC.

The documents, never made public, indicate that between April 2020 and June 2021, Amazon experienced “severe fire events or arcs” at at least six of the 47 locations Points in North America have solar installations, affecting 12.7% of such facilities. An arc discharge is a type of electrical explosion.

“The rate of hazardous incidents is unacceptable and above the industry average,” an Amazon employee wrote in one of the internal reports.

Solar energy highlights the challenge faced by Amazon and many other large corporations in their quest to shrink their environmental footprint and reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Amazon is one of the most active companies. In 2019, founder Jeff Bezos launched Climate Pledge, which promises the largest online retailer to be zero-emissions by 2040, embrace renewable energy and move away from gas-guzzling delivery vehicles, including through a multi-billion dollar investment in the company. tram Rivian.

Amazon’s Learning Curve with Solar

Corporate America is under pressure from regulators and a growing small group of investors to set and report environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals.

More people will be able to reap financial rewards for renewable energy efforts after Congress passes it in August. Inflation Reduction Actwhich includes climate provisions that are expected to reduce the country’s carbon emissions by around 40% by 2030.

Wood Mackenzie solar analyst Michelle Davis expects 8% annual growth over the next five years, thanks in part to the law. Warehouses can make the most of solar energy, she says, because they have large roofs and the system can power all of the HVAC, refrigeration and other energy-intensive systems. inside.

But costly and dangerous problems can arise.

The solar system on the roof of Amazon’s Fresno warehouse caused three fires in 2020.

Fresno . Fire Department

In June last year, all of Amazon’s US operations with solar power had to temporarily go offline, internal documents show. The company must ensure its systems are properly designed, installed and maintained before “re-energizing” any of them.

Amazon spokeswoman Erika Howard told CNBC in a statement that the incidents involved systems operated by partners, and the company responded by voluntarily shutting down energy-intensive rooftops. Sun.

“Out of an abundance of caution, following a number of minor incidents with on-site solar systems owned and operated by third parties, Amazon took the initiative to power off its on-site solar systems. we are in North America and took immediate steps to re-test each installation by the company’s leading solar engineering specialist,” the statement said.

Those details don’t show up in Amazon’s 100 pages of sustainability reports for 2021, published in early August. In that report, made available to the public through Amazon’s sustainability website, the company said rooftop solar powered 115 their fulfillment centers globally by the end of 2021, up from more than 90 by mid-year. Most of them are outside the US

“Many of our fulfillment facilities across the US, Europe and India are powered by on-site solar energy,” the report said.

As of April this year, Amazon had solar systems in place at 176 facilities, according to its website. Solar program has been started in 2017.

“Once the testing is complete, our on-site solar system is being turned back on,” says Howard. “Amazon has also built a dedicated team of solar experts to oversee the construction, operation, and maintenance of our systems in-house to ensure the safety of our systems.”

Excluded from the public sustainability report is any mention of the costs Amazon incurs when something goes wrong. An Amazon employee estimated that, in documents circulating internally, each incident cost the company an average of $2.7 million. Costs include third-party audits of rooftop solar systems, testing of how much electricity they generate, and repairs for any damaged or defective parts of the system that the inspectors determined.

Amazon employees also said the company will lose $940,000 per month, or $20,000, for each of the 47 shutdown locations in North America, as long as solar remains offline. There could be additional costs for Amazon depending on contracts with clean energy partners for renewable energy credits, the documents show.

To date, Amazon has contracted with third-party vendors to design and then install rooftop solar photovoltaic systems and large on-site backup batteries. Other majors retailers, including Walmart and Targetalso installed solar rooftops and implemented programs to cut energy bills and achieve sustainability goals.

In addition to its warehouses, Amazon has several rooftop solar systems at Whole Foods stores. The documents say Amazon and its auditing firm, Clean Energy Associates (CEA), have stopped testing rooftop solar systems at Whole Foods locations until 2022. At the end of the year 2021, four years after acquiring Whole Foods, Amazon is still working to get technical information on renewable energy assets in stores.

Solar panels are being installed on the roof of a Walmart store in California.

Walmart

To maintain tighter quality control over its solar systems, some Amazon employees have recommended bringing more operations in-house. The Perryville, Maryland fire, the sixth failure in more than a year, prompted the company to take systematic action.

On June 17, 2021, about a week after a fire at a warehouse known as MDT2, Amazon’s sustainability division directed rooftop solar system owners and developers to their U.S. warehouses shut down. Solar rooftops will no longer produce electricity from the sun or produce renewable energy credits.

Amazon then hired Denver-based CEA to conduct third-party audits of their rooftop solar systems in the US, Asia-Pacific, and Europe and China regions. East and Africa.

Late last year, while the CEA was still conducting the inspection, it notified Amazon of one of its key findings and 259 key findings across Amazon’s rooftop solar portfolio. Issues include mismatched module-to-module connectors, improper connector installation, poor wire management and evidence of water ingress in the inverters, internal documents say .

Problems with inverters, which turn solar energy into usable electricity, were identified as a possible cause of fires at at least one Amazon warehouse. Wilding, the Fresno fire inspector, concluded the fire at FAT1 “started from or near two inverters,” according to an investigative report obtained by CNBC through a request for public records.

Malfunction and improper installation

Amazon blames its partners and third-party vendors for the most significant problems discovered by the CEA and other groups working on facilities and sustainability initiatives.

“Over the past five years, solar problems have been caused by improper installation, improper operation of the new system, inadequate system maintenance, and malfunctioning equipment,” the document says. .

Amazon teams working on facilities and sustainability initiatives have come up with a two-part plan to help prevent future problems with the rooftop solar program.

At the end of 2021, departments requested $3.6 million in funding to re-examine the locations where key findings were discovered to ensure the system is safely brought back online, by internal mail.

Internal groups have also begun to urge Amazon’s leadership to rely more on salaried employees and less on external suppliers. Over time, the company has hired more solar experts focused on procurement, design, construction and maintenance globally.

In some cases, management was very slow to respond. For example, the groups in the company that agitated for change have taken the lead approve the rental plan, re-check and re-energise. But efforts have been made by top Amazon executives, including Kara Hurst, vice president of worldwide sustainability, and Alicia Boler-Davis, senior vice president of global customer fulfillment. required, over several months. left the company in June 2022, according to internal correspondence from CNBC.

Amazon countered claims in the documents that management was slow to respond to employee requests.

Job openings show that Amazon is still looking to hire insiders for its solar operations.

Recently, the company was looking for people to manage sustainability projects across its North American facilities, including rooftop solar. There is a present list for a technical program partner in the solar group said that a key aspect of the position is working with “in-house partners” on solar design, construction and sustainability worldwide. gender, among other divisions.

In trying to ramp up staffing, Amazon has acknowledged that going green comes with obstacles, especially for a company “of the size and scope of Amazon.”

“But at Amazon, we don’t shy away from big challenges,” Hurst wrote in the 2021 sustainability report kick-off letter. “We don’t have all the answers today, but we do. believe action is needed now.”

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