Overview
- U.S. Energy Information Administration and industry reports say Pattern Energy’s SunZia project will begin commercial operations this month with 916 turbines and about 3.6–3.65 gigawatts of summer capacity.
- At full output the farm can generate enough electricity to serve roughly one million homes and will raise wind to about 45% of New Mexico’s capacity mix.
- Most of SunZia’s power will flow out of New Mexico over a new ±525 kV, roughly 550-mile high-voltage direct current line to markets in Arizona and Southern California.
- The project finished long construction and permitting stages, including a pause over tribal concerns and more than 17 years of approvals, before Pattern Energy closed roughly $11 billion in financing and resumed full work in late 2023.
- Analysts say recent higher fossil-fuel prices and surging demand from data centers have improved the economics for large renewables builds, making SunZia’s start a sign of faster utility-scale clean energy deployment.