Three years ago, this stretch of central New Mexico desert had no infrastructure to speak of. Now it holds the largest wind farm ever built in the United States, and it's already sending power to three states.

  • 916 wind turbines now spinning across central New Mexico
  • 3,650 MW (3.5 GW) of generating capacity — the biggest wind farm in the U.S.
  • 550 miles of new transmission line carrying power to Arizona and California
  • $11 billion+ invested by developer Pattern Energy

From empty desert to America's biggest wind farm

The SunZia Wind project sits near the small town of Corona, New Mexico, where developer Pattern Energy began construction in 2023. The build combined turbines from GE Vernova and Vestas, including 674 of GE Vernova's newer "3.6-154" workhorse turbines, across a footprint large enough to require its own dedicated high-voltage transmission line.

That line, also called SunZia, runs roughly 550 miles from the wind farm to Arizona, with power continuing on to California utilities. Before SunZia came online, New Mexico's total wind capacity stood at about 3,997 megawatts; this single project pushed that figure past 7,600 megawatts, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The project's path to completion wasn't quick. SunZia was first proposed in the 2000s and spent years in permitting and environmental review before construction finally began in 2023 — a multi-year runway that's typical for transmission-scale renewable projects in the U.S., where permitting often takes longer than actual construction.

Where the power goes

As of this month, all 916 turbines are online and the transmission line is fully energized, Pattern Energy confirmed, sending electricity to households across the Southwest. Arizona's Salt River Project alone has agreed to purchase 600 megawatts of that capacity.

"As an American based wind manufacturer, we are proud to have supported Pattern in bringing this historic project online," said David Hardy, global chief commercial officer for wind at GE Vernova.

The project's scale is easy to state in numbers but harder to picture: 916 turbines works out to roughly one turbine for every square mile of a mid-sized U.S. county, spread across ranchland that Pattern Energy says it worked to keep in agricultural use throughout construction. The company expects SunZia to support local jobs and generate meaningful tax revenue for the rural counties hosting it for decades to come.

For the grid, the bigger significance is timing. SunZia becomes fully operational just as electricity demand climbs again across the Southwest, driven partly by data centers and continued population growth in Arizona and Southern California. Having 3.5 gigawatts of new carbon-free generation — enough to power roughly a million homes — arrive in a single project gives grid operators a rare, large jump in clean capacity rather than a slow trickle of smaller wind farms.

SunZia's turbines will keep spinning quietly in the New Mexico high desert, but the transmission line underneath them is now doing the more consequential work: moving a genuinely large amount of clean power to exactly the places that need it most.