SunZia, the Largest Wind Project on Earth, Is Operational

June 25, 2026

The biggest renewable energy project in the world is producing power after a nearly two-decade-long permitting process (Los Angeles Times).

What’s going on: SunZia Wind—a 3.65-gigawatt, $11 billion wind project delivering wind power from New Mexico to Arizona and then into southern California—is now fully operational, SunZia owner Pattern Energy announced last week.

The 916-turbine project, which includes a 550-mile high-voltage line and is capable of powering 1 million homes, is more than three times larger than either of the two next-biggest American wind farms, Alta Wind in California and Great Prairie in Texas.

Already making a difference: “Since SunZia began testing in April, the state’s Independent System Operator, CAISO, has reported record-breaking amounts of wind power on the California grid at least five times,” according to an analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

SunZia’s wind output on May 15 reached a record 8,294 megawatts—nearly 1,600 megawatts higher than the previous record.

Part of a larger move: SunZia, an idea that was conceived in 2006, “reflects a renewed effort to move large amounts of remote wind or solar power to high-demand population centers across multiple states.”

A permitting-reform poster child: Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico—the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee who advocated for the project during its 18-year journey toward completion—told the Los Angeles Times that SunZia shows the need for comprehensive permitting reform in Congress.

“My hope is that we can take this project, lift it up as an example, and apply some of those lessons more broadly. We need to be able to do multiple SunZias.”