Trend: Wind may become a key energy source in the United States.
Betsy Blaney at Star-Telegram.com writes that T. Boone Pickens wants to build world's largest wind farm in West Texas. Excerpts below.
Link: Star-Telegram.com | 06/13/2007 | Pickens wants to build world's largest wind farm
Billionaire T. Boone Pickens is planning to cash in on the wind energy boom by building the world's largest wind farm in West Texas.
The oil tycoon wants to install large wind turbines in parts of four Panhandle counties in a project that would produce up to 4,000 megawatts of electricity, Pickens spokesman Mike Boswell said Wednesday.
If Pickens' company, Mesa Power LP, does build the wind farm it would be the largest in the world, American Wind Energy Association spokeswoman Susan Williams Sloan said. It would generate more than five times the 735 megawatts produced at the present largest wind farm near Abilene.
One megawatt is enough to power 250 homes in Texas, Sloan said.
Pickens' proposal, which would cost as much as $6 billion, would fall just short of nearly doubling what Texas had at the end of 2006, when wind power totaled about 2,700 megawatts, she said.
Construction of Pickens' project would begin in 2010 and involve as many as 200,000 acres in Roberts, Gray, Hemphill and Wheeler counties, Boswell said. The farm would have as many as 2,000 wind turbines, and some would be large enough to generate 2.5 megawatts each.
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