Adelaide Advertiser
Saturday 3/10/2009 Page: 83
THE world's largest windfarm officially was up and running yesterday, with all 627 towering wind turbines churning out electricity across 40,470ha of West Texas farmland. The Roscoe Wind Complex, which began construction in 2007 and sprawls across four counties near Roscoe, was generating its full capacity of 781.5 MWs, enough to power 230,000 homes, German company E.ON Climate and Renewables North America said. "This is truly a milestone for us," company chief development officer Patrick Woodson said. "In three years to be able to take this project from cotton fields to the biggest windfarm in the world is something we're very proud of."
The complex is about 350km west of Dallas and 480km south of the land where billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens had planned an even larger windfarm before he scrapped the idea in July. Texas leads the U.S, in windpower production and this windfarm tops the capacity record of 735.5 MWs set by another West Texas farm. Renewable energy makes up a small fraction of the electricity grid but the wind and solar sectors were among the fastest growing in the U.S, before the recession.
Wind power in Texas has grown again this year but has slowed from last year's rate. "We are expecting 2009 to be a somewhat smaller year overall but still a fairly solid year," Kathy Belyeu, of the American Wind Energy Association, said. At Roscoe, the turbines range from about 106m to 126m tall and generally are spaced about 274m apart.
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