LUBBOCK, Texas -- 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.
Not all planned wind projects in Texas become reality, though. Earlier this week, a developer who planned to build what would have been the nation's largest offshore wind farm in South Texas called off the project because it didn't make economic sense.
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