Clean energy for the cloud with AWS Waveswing
In line with its core business, Growens’s growth has always been supported by constant and significant investments in technological and infrastructural innovation.
During 2022, the Group kept relying on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platforms and infrastructures, adopting also the AWS Waveswing technology which exploits the wave motion to generate energy in a sustainable way for the data infrastructure.
Growens and AWS Cloud
For its cloud infrastructure, Growens relies on Amazon Web Services (AWS), leader in 2022 (for the twelfth consecutive year) in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for platform services and cloud infrastructures (first for both execution skills and completeness of the vision).
Thanks to its energy efficiency, five times better than the median of corporate European data centers, and to its efficiency programmes impacting the whole structure, Growens can save meaningful expenses on IT costs and consistently improve its productivity, business agility and operational resilience.
AWS Waveswing
Among the initiatives proposed by AWS and used by Growens, the Waveswing solution is an off-shore technology that exploits wave motion to generate energy.
This technology is composed by a submerged wave power buoy that reacts to changes in sub-sea water pressure caused by passing waves and converts the resulting motion to electricity via a direct-drive generator.
The system is suitable for deployment in water depths in excess of 25m and it can be composed by a single buoy or by a more complex structure with the integration of a multi-absorber element that can offer up a higher energy production.
Up to now, the wave energy converter captured an average power of over 10kW, peaking at 80kW during a period of moderate wave conditions. Such data exceeded the developer’s forecasts by 20%.
Waveswing benefits
- Self-installing, single-point mooring
The tension-tether minimises mooring spread, while the on-board winch and quick-connect anchor attachment allows self-installation.
- Power performance for economics
This technology, thanks to its operating principle and the intelligent software, is able to generate sector-leading power per ton of structure, reducing costs as much as possible.
- Less risks of damage with a subsea location
Being positioned underwater it has the advantage of avoiding damages by storm forces.
Growens results powered by AWS
As mentioned before, Growens relies on Amazon Web Services (AWS), which undertakes to manage the Group’s activities in the most efficient and ecological way, as well as to achieve 100% renewable energy use for the entire infrastructure by 2025.
The AWS infrastructure, one of the best in terms of both capability and customer experience, enables greater internal flexibility and process scalability.
The customer carbon footprint tool detects the CO2 consumption (in MTCO2e) of the Growens resources within the global AWS infrastructure: from 2020 to 2022, it recorded a significant decrease from 9.4 MTCO2e to 3.7 MTCO2e.
Wrap up
Innovation at Growens is the key factor for sustained growth, economic viability, and increased well-being of its people and the environment.
Among the most innovative activities Growens do in favor of the environment, there are the Smart Flower solar panels, its carbon neutral websites and the One Tree, One Customer initiative.
To conclude, innovation is the only way to allow its context to develop and for this reason it will continue its Research and Development (R&D) activity, exploring new design ideas.
To learn more about Growens’ initiatives related to sustainability, please download our latest Sustainability Report.
