What is the largest wind farm in the world? Well, right now it’s the Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center in Texas. This wind farm has 421 wind turbines that generate a total capacity of 735 megawatts. The wind turbines are spread across 47,000 acres of land in Taylor and Nolan County, Texas.
There are 291 GE Energy 1.5 megawatt wind turbines and 130 Siemens 2.3 megawatt wind turbines.
The turbines are owned by Florida Power & Light (FPL Energy). The company operates 46 other wind farms throughout the U.S., they have a total capacity of 4,002 megawatts.
{ 37 comments… read them below or add one }
How many units per year does the Horse Holl0w Windfarm produce?
I wish my town that I live in owned a small wind farm, a co-op wind farm so the residents here could get a break on electricity
I wish my little town could own a small wind farm. A co-op wind farm so that the local resident could save on their electric bill.
Texas is ahead of the curve. I wish we had something like this in North Carolina.
Is this still the largest wind farm?
You’d really want this God-awful mess in your backyard?! Careful what you wish for. We have them sprawled across our once peaceful and beautiful scenic county, and now you can’t leave you home or look out your window with out seeing one of these “green” monsters. Do your research, they’re not as green as the developers would lead you to believe. Don’t buy into their nonsense. It’s all about profit, and not about energy savings!
You’ve told a good thought. But currently, there is a growth in Offshore building of Wind Farms. And it looks like we die earlier from H1 N1 then from lack of electricity or visual impact… =)
And as far as profit is concerned, USA always thought about profit..
As long ago as They won second world war
And nowadays, the third world war is taking place…
Hi Kelly,
is there a better solution to the nations energy needs? more coal and gas burning power plants? talk about not being “green”! I would rather see more spinning wind mills and solar panels than clouds of toxic waste spewing into the atmosphere….
I have done research… Please explain, what is not “green” about them?
I am not trying to be condescending but may have missed somethings that you did not.
Lastly, every aspect about ANY business is profit. What is wrong with making a profit? Do you work? if so, your company must also be making a profit in order to employ you and give you a paycheck.
PRO – WIND/SOLAR!
I just finished analyzing E-O-Y annual production figures on three (3), wind farms. Two of the wind farms are in California (Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm, 5,000 wind turbines with installed capacity of 960MW and Altamont Pass Wind Farm, 4,900 wind turbines with installed capacity of 576MW). The average daily output per wind turbine at Tehachapi is 0.7 MW/day and for each wind turbine at Altamont it’s 0.6MW/day. The third wind farm was the King Mountain Wind Farm in Texas. King Mountain has 214 wind turbines, installed capacity of 278.2MW. The average daily output of each King Mtn. wind turbine is 9.9MW daily.
Facts are: a wind turbine hasn’t resulted to present date of a single ounce of CO2, or NOx emission being saved. No evidence exist that a single coal power plant has been cancelled from the creation of a wind farm. Also a little known secret: every MW installed capacity of a wind farm must be backed up with another (coal, biomass, nuclear, geothermal, or another) energy source.
To give you an example – a 4MW renewable green energy biomass power plant will output a steady and continuous 96MW per day with no CO2 or NOx emissions. The per MW construction cost of a biomass power plant is in the worst case equal to or in best case half the construction cost of a single wind turbine. From the wind farm data above it would take 10 each (at best) to 160 (at worst) wind turbines to equal the output of one 4MW biomass power plant running a continuous 24/7 with a constant 4MW per hour electricity to the grid.
You tell me which energy source delivers the “bigger bang for your buck” and which would you rely on to be there when you need and demand it. A few things to consider and think on.
Thanks, Jim
So the biomass fuel comes free?? Like the wind?
Jim,
Thanks for the information however Bio seems to have its issues as well…
http://www.alternate-energy-sources.com/disadvantage-of-biomass.html
* Greenhouse gases produced by burning
* Extra costs of installing technology to process and recycle wastes
* Expensive to collect, harvest and store raw materials
* Large scale crop production will use vast areas of land and water
I am not saying solar/wind is the end all answer and i do agree that its best use is to back up existing generation systems. I am not apposed to nuclear, coal/gas, bio, hydro, tidal… I believe that a combination of these energy sources (built in the optimal locations) can help provide a cost effective power source for all when needed.
I think the best thing we could do is to learn how to conserve the energy produced, therefor decreasing the demand, which will decreasing the cost due to supply and demand. I recall during the rolling brown outs that several large businesses were curtailing their use… seems no one conserves until its too late. I live completely off grid and conserve my use nearly every day. It takes some planning and adjusting my lifestyle but it does make me appreciate it more! also keeps my kids from being planted in front of the TV/Xbox for countless hours of the day!
Nuclear is the way to go. Zero emissions, small amount of completely containable waste, competitive with coal as one of the cheapest ways to produce energy even if you include capital costs, and they take up way less space than wind farms. For example, one of the largest nuclear power plant sites, the STP nuclear power plants, produces 2500 MW of constant power, and it takes up only a fourth of the area of the acreage of the largest wind power plant. And most of the area on the STP site is the cooling pond and surrounding areas which are protected habitats for many threatened species including the bald eagle.
The only reason nuclear power from being as big as coal and petroleum, if not bigger, is irrational fear brought about by people who masquerade themselves as green scientist, but are really just jumping on the popularized, uninformed hollywood idea of green energy. If you do not believe me google three mile island and you will see that it was not nearly as bad as you have been led to believe. Multiple epidemiological studies agree that the small release of radiation either had no effect on the population surrounding the reactor or the effect is so small that it is impossible to perceive.
Also what they do not tell you is that while each turbine is rated at 1.5 MW, that is the max power, but a typical wind turbine produces less than 50% of that on average. Google “wind power plants capacity factor”.
I love the idea of a new energy source!!! I think that america and the rest of the world needs a newer energy source that won’t pollute the earth!! call me a tree hugger but i love the wind farms!!! they are saving our planet!!
The power yield of a typical wind farm is between 25 and 50% of installed capacity, some are higher, some a re lower. Be VERY aware with anti wind NIMBY’s posting credible looking write ups on wind power claiming that they do not work, it’s all lies dressed up as fact – the typical way the NIMBY’s mislead people. Atomic power has manifest hidden problems and carbon emissions.
I will support Nuclear fission fires when the good folk at Chernobyl return to farm their land, and human error has been eliminated from the face of the earth! Want to see pathetic asshvles struggling to put out a fire they wish they had never started? SEE: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5384001427276447319
Until Nuclear fission-fires are much advanced, and no longer produce waste products I rest my case. As for NIMBY, when the only place he can find a job is with renewable resources he sings an entirely different song! He has always been this way, fickle and malleable by the circumstances of his paycheck, a pain in the ass to developers, but that’s how he makes his living, sometimes. The new BYD GM Chevy “Volt” knock-off, is up and running, batteries wanting charge overnight, or whenever the wind will oblige, and will sell like hotcakes at really low prices in America as soon as GM gets off the pot, admits the EV-1 was its death knell, and the Volt is vaporware, never to see city streets and designed to pump money from the government! The Apetura, and American, or rather, Californian entry is in full production, not waiting for the mighty GM to break ground, but steaming ahead with a very good battery car. Tesla, both the sports model and sedan, have plug-ins ready to dim streetlights with demand, and Wind, Solar, Tidal, Wave, Hydro, and Geothermal the renewables, or “perpetuals” if renewable means nothing to you, await investment and development, already researched and deemed quite capable by our best minds to fill in the gap between our romance with gasoline and the piston engine, and the new realities, turbo-bio-diesel/Electrics with safer plastic and carbon fiber bodies, smaller, faster, short haul machines, for usually two folks at a time, for the cost of an overnight plug-in to solar cells, wind turbines, tidal generators, wave stations, geothermal generators, and ready to go the next day. The SUV’s due to planned obsolescence are gone with GM, and the highways belong to the new electrics, save for the odd transport truck, running on bio-diesel to a bitter end. Watch those train crossings, they’ll be busier now due to cheaper freight rates than trucks can do, and expect intercity bullet trains to take the place of flying or motoring great distances, a thing of the past with the new oil prices and carbon taxes. Plant a garden, just for practice, the financial Derivatives stuff hasn’t hit the fan yet. Brace yourself now.
Bill,
Do you really think power companies would be building turbines if they are only 50% efficient? Quit being so narrow minded and start thinking that these wind turbines give me a pay check every week, while most people in today’s economy are being laid off.
One should always try to be open minded and research each issue before commenting. I am for alternative power sources and I agree with some of the positive issues on wind power. But as I research the wind turbines I find that there are many issues that people seem to over look. It takes tons of fossil fuel elements to produce each wind turbine. They are not made from recyled products. Each unit is manufactured from new material. As we inspect our wind sites we see hundreds of miles of new roads being carved into each area they are placed. We see hundreds of miles of electrical cable being buried, this cable was produced in a fossil fuel plant. We observed hundreds of fossil fuel burning cement trucks haul thousands of cubic yards of concrete to pour around miles of steel rebar both made in mfg. plants. It takes hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel to ship, construct the site and erect these units. The unit cost of each turbine is in the single digit millions of dollars plus the base, plus the roads, plus the cables plus man power equals a very expensive source of power. Kw cost factors in the Pacific Northwest for electrical cooperatives two years ago was in the vacinity of: hydro = 3-5 cents per Kw, methane landfill powered = 12 – 18 cents per Kw, wind turbines = 23 – 27 cents per Kw. Another issue is the electrical grid that is having to be constructed to handle all of the different wind turbine locations. This has a positive aspect as our current electrical grid system is very out dated.
The government is involved thus they are telling the power companies what source of power to buy and what % to buy. This is from a government that does not recognize hydro power as a renewable power source. Also remember that our taxes are subsidizing each wind turbine or these units would not be expanding as rapidly as they are. Another concern is the repair bills in the future.
As I drive through our large wind farms in the surrounding areas of the Columbia Gorge and near Walla Walla, Wa there have been times when none of the units were moving, no wind. When the wind does not cooperate there is no power created.
Are these units a good thing? They create good jobs in every aspects of their creation and operation so my comment is “The future will be the telling process”. One last item, you will see an increase in your power bill when the taxpayer subsidies dries up. This is reality of government and big business. Have a blessed day.
Investors have devastated hundreds, if not thousands, of acres of pristine desert for windfarms just a few miles south of me (in the Palm Springs, CA area), and more and more are going up all the time. Not only are they ugly and destructive, my power rates are still going up and up. I don’t know who is “making money” or “saving money” on these things, but it sure is not me. Sure, they do not produce CO2, but they guzzle up land like an SUV guzzles up gas. In the name of going “green”, Los Angeles plans to build thousands of these things in the desert along with tearing up hundreds of miles of desert for transmission lines. We won’t see any of that power, either, but we sure will have to look at things and suffer with the destruction they cause to our desert environment. I don’t know what the solution to our energy problems are, but covering our environment with windmills, solar plants, and geothermal installations does not seem all that “environmental”, either. Sure, it’s fine if you live in LA, but then LA doesn’t mind sending their trash and criminals into our desert, either. Anything they don’t want, they just put it here and get away with it.
Today I drove from Lubbock Texas down to Abilene Texas. The amount of wind turbines along highway 84 is staggering. Some places as far as the eye can see both ways. The beautiful mesas were covered with them. Some turning, some not. Farm land was filled with them with the farm houses being surrounded. I felt a bit sorry for the folks in those houses and hoped they got a bit of money for their new ‘crop’. There is around 78 miles of windmills atleast!
I guess until they start putting those things all over the city scapes, then the ‘green’ folks with want them. Never mind all the human ‘footprints’ now all over those beautiful mesas and the wildlife affected.
I wondered how much energy they actually put out. I looked into getting one for my home (smaller scale) but found out the cost far outweighed any savings in the next 10 years.
The issue at hand when dealing with renewables like solar and wind is that by and large people are very myopic. You look at the financials this year and see a huge investment in something that doesn’t seem to generate a lot of money for the amount of power it produces. But think about over the next twenty years. Americans, especially, are crippled by shortsightedness and the need to have things here and now. In the long run, renewables pay off HUGE. The environment is largely untouched, except for building the actual machinery.
Your counterpoints: the windmill looks so ugly! Guess what? A coal plant looks f’ing ugly, too. And it belches death into the air. And a coal mine looks even uglier. And it destroys the environment far more than a windmill.
Another counterpoint: what about all those workers at the coal mine who lose their jobs! Other forms of energy (solar, wind, hydro, etc.) all require people to work, also. And these other forms also require a higher level of education. So the incentive is for people to go back to school and learn more. And, on top of that, all those coal workers who are subjected to piss poor working conditions, the burdens of unionized labor, and horrible wages now can live a healthier lifestyle, go back to school, and find better jobs.
Anonymous wrote: “Your counterpoints: the windmill looks so ugly! Guess what? A coal plant looks f’ing ugly, too. And it belches death into the air. And a coal mine looks even uglier. And it destroys the environment far more than a windmill. ”
That same specious argument is used to justify ANWR drilling, with the claim that the total “footprint” is “only 2,000 acres.” It ignores the spiderweb effect of all the land in between, plus all the access roads. It’s like saying you can build a scattered subdivision over a huge area and still call it wilderness. It just doesn’t work that way.
Horse Hollow covers 47,000 acres, which is 73 square miles, or a rectangle 7.3 miles by 10 miles. Show me another type of plant that remotely comes close to using that amount of land. Again, it’s total coverage per megawatt, not just specific spots where the towers reside. A lot of “green” hypocrites would scream if an oil well farm covered that much area. And oil rigs are destined for removal when the wells go dry. Wind turbines just sit there in permablight status.
Mindlessly chasing wind because of greenhouse gas reductions is a poor quality-of-life trade off. Nuclear and solar (ideally on existing rooftops) makes a lot more economic and aesthetic sense.
That’s 47,000 acres (73 square miles!) that used to be relatively scenic and is now an industrial park. Many roads had to be cut into that land to service the towers.
I pity America’s remaining open space that isn’t protected and exists in high-rated wind zones. Wind power has the potential to ruin the old frontier, or the semblance of one that still inspires imaginations. People have to clutter every possible acre with themselves, homes, roads, cattle and chattel. When will it stop?
Those who argue against turbines strictly on economic terms need to get souls. This is the most visually-destructive form of energy per megawatt ever invented. Huge solar arrays aren’t so great either, but they have a much lower profile. We should put all this wind fervor into making nuclear safer, since it has much greater energy density.
Of course, we must never ask people (worldwide) to use more birth control to stabilize population size and energy demand, thus reducing the need for these “green” scars in the first place. Yeah, let’s avoid common sense and just build, build, build. It “creates jobs” after all; slaves to the mindless mantra of growth. You can often spot bad environmental policy by the increase in construction jobs it creates.
as a person who previously worked at the Horse Hollow wind farm (2006-2008) i can tell you that the land is not 73 square miles of “Industrial Park”. It’s farm land. There were cows and crops there far before there were wind turbines. There are still just as many cows and crops there now minus the relatively small footprint of the wind turbines. Most of the wind turbines are directly off the ranchers access roads so not much was put in as far as access roads are concerned. Anyone who has not been on a wind farm has no idea what they’re talking about when they start opening their mouths about wind farms.
I live near Horse Hollow Wind Farm and yes it has helped our local economy, but I also have to wonder just how cost efficient they really are when over 100 of them are needing the F engines per unit replaced or repaired. That is yes, 400 engines leaking oil inside those massive towers. Electric engines require electricity to run, and I have never heard just how much of the energy produced by each wind turbine is used to run it.
That is 4 engines per unit, not F engines. Excuse the typo
you have 291 wind genorators why did you not just make it 300
Because the likes of *you* couldn’t be bothered to read to the end of the line where you saw “291″.
is it still the largest one? can you give me more information about wind energy please. and what is an interesting similarity between off land and on land.
thank you
Wind is King! Now that the oil is drying up what other choices do Americans have? We must convert from liquid energies to Electrical energy at any rate! We have, Solar,Wind, Wave, Tidal, Hydro, Geothermal and Nuclear – all translate into Electric Power! None can be converted to liquid fuels! All are clean and perpetual, save for nuclear! When was the last time you heard of refueling the Hoover Dam? Coal is still a great contender, and always will be, because America has its own coal in the ground! All of these will be suppressed by the oil barons – look what they did to the electric car the EV-1! Google, torrent, the movie “Who Stole The Electric Car” and get a free lesson on corporate power in America! The same folks that killed the electric car are fighting new energy sources because they see the writing on the wall! Liquid fuels are dead! Foreign oil imports keep America broke! America has no oil left in the ground! Time for Change!
I would not want my own wind turbine farm!! I did some research, and saw that the turbines make an awful whole lot of noise. And also it kills birds. But besides those, I don’t think there is any other enviorment hazard problems with it.
By the way, thanks for the great facts! It really helped my report ( I got an A
)
look up SPPI and read the article on the real cost of windturbines. It’s a very long study and probably more than most ‘green freaks’ are willing to read but worth the time. Our tax dollars by the billions are going to subsidize these wind farms. Our cost for electricity has already gone up because power companies are forced to buy electricity from them at a higher cost per kw. Worse most equipment is built overseas not by US citizens. And by the way-the US has the largest oil reserves in THE WORLD and over 200 years of coal.
would installing a solar farm in an existing wind farm be sensible and practical, so the land space below can be utilized. Will the solar farm function effeciently. Would love to hear any ideas on this
Look forward for the day in America where lifestyle changes and better, more efficient electricity uses, including good cheap LED’s replace the current technologies, philosophies, and America, through conversion form foreign liquid energy economy, to a domestic electric based economy, flourishes once again as a world example of how to do things correctly! Even our doctors cry for dietary change, our economy for energy change, our daughters, one in four between ages 13 and 18 with STD’s cry for social change! A new, improved model is in order for the average American, who’s schools rate only 32nd in the world by admission of our own Pre4sident – For Shame! The richest country, the freest country in the world, the best fed of all world populations and wityh the worlds best doctors, yet we fail miserably socially and are not sustainable? The glorious days of chrome tipped wings on cars and smoke-stacks everywher are gone, and we enter a new age, of environmental responsibility, sustainability, and responsible living! Can Americans make it, that is the Question. Use CFL’s LED’s and Hybrid cars, and insulate for cheaper heating and cooling nation wide and make change happen! Make America great once again!
awesome! radical!
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If u havnt been to a turbine site( most of u havnt) u wouldn’t know how noisy, or how many birds they kill!! There is very little sound (unless directly under the turbine running). Not once have I seen a bird die, from a running turbine!? Don’t believe every thing u read.