November 29, 2006—FPL Energy recently held a dedication ceremony for an expansion project at the Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center near Abilene, Texas. The project boosted the plant’s total generating capacity to 735 MW, making it the largest wind power facility in the world.
The American Wind Energy Association had listed the center as the largest wind project built in 2005, at 210 megawatts (MW), then credited it in July for growing to about 500 MW, helping Texas overtake California in total installed wind power capacity.
The wind plant now consists of 291 1.5-MW wind turbines from General Electric and 130 2.3-MW wind turbines from Siemens. It is spread across about 47,000 acres in Taylor and Nolan counties in central Texas. FPL Energy is currently the largest owner and operator of wind turbines in the world, operating more than 1,600 megawatts of wind power in Texas alone, according to the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).
