Mesa Power LP, a company controlled by former

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

oilman,

T. Boone Pickens Thomas Boone Pickens Jr. (May 22, 1928 – September 11, 2019) was an American business magnate and financier. Pickens chaired the hedge fund BP Capital Management. He was a well-known takeover operator and corporate raider during the 1980 ...

, planned to build the world's largest

wind farm A wind farm, also called a wind park or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundred wind turbines covering an exten ...

, called the Pampa Wind Project, as part of the

Pickens Plan The Pickens Plan is an energy policy proposal announced July 8, 2008, by American businessman T. Boone Pickens. Pickens wanted to reduce American dependence on imported oil by investing approximately $US1 trillion in new wind turbine farms for ...

. The proposed 4,000 MW facility was to be located near

Pampa, Texas Pampa (from the Quechua: ''pampa'', meaning "plain") is a city in Gray County, Texas, United States. Its population was 16,867 as of the 2020 census. Pampa is the county seat of Gray County and is the principal city of the Pampa micropolita ...

, which is on the Texas Panhandle, and stretch to the east, spanning in five counties. This would provide enough power for 1.5 million average residences. Mesa Power placed an order for 667 wind turbines from

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1892, incorporated in the New York (state), state of New York and headquartered in Boston. Over the year ...

— the world's largest

wind turbine A wind turbine is a device that wind power, converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy. , hundreds of thousands of list of most powerful wind turbines, large turbines, in installations known as wind farms, were generating over ...

order for a single location. The first phase of the project, 1000 MW, was planned to go online before 2011 before the project was halted. Lease payments for the land used by the turbines were expected to cost $65 million a year. The total cost of the project was estimated at $8–10 billion. By way of comparison, as of May 2008, the largest wind plant in the United States was the

Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center is a large wind farm with 735.5 megawatts (MW) of capacity. It consists of 291 GE 1.5-megawatt wind turbines and 139 Siemens 2.3-megawatt wind turbines spread over nearly of land in Taylor and Nolan County, Texa ...

, with a capacity of 736 MW. On March 2, 2009, Mesa announced that it was proceeding with the first phase of the project, but had put off work on the later phases, and canceled 120 of 197 wind leases. In July 2009, Pickens delayed the project, but did not cancel it, citing the lack of transmission capacity to the site and a poor credit market. The following January, the project was cancelled completely. Declining prices for natural gas were cited as a reason for the decision. The order for the wind turbines was cut in half and the turbines were to be used in projects in Minnesota and Ontario, Canada.

References

{{Energy in the United States Carson County, Texas Gray County, Texas Hemphill County, Texas Roberts County, Texas Wheeler County, Texas Cancelled projects in the United States