The world’s largest wind farm has made its debut in Texas, but unfortunately for T. Boone Pickens, it’s not the wind farm he was working on. The latest and largest wind farm in Texas is called the Roscoe Wind Complex, spans four counties near Roscoe, Texas, and is owned by German-based E.ON Climate & Renewables, one of the top wind power companies in the world.

Situated 300 miles south of where T. Boone Pickens planned to build a wind farm that would receive the same acclaim, Roscoe Wind Complex features 627 wind turbines and covers 100,000 acres of West Texas cotton farmland (where farmers will still continue to work the fields surrounding the turbines). At a more than $1 billion investment from E.ON, the Roscoe Wind Complex is far from a cheap endeavor, but still came in about $1 billion lower than the $2 billlion Pickens had already invested in his attempt at the world’s largest wind farm—and that was without his project ever reaching the stage of an operating wind farm.

Already generating at its full capacity of 781.5 megawatts, the Roscoe Wind Complex earns its ranking of world’s largest wind farm by a relatively small 46-megawatts more than the Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center that held the previous record (also located in West Texas). Texas has been the leading state for wind capacity for the past three years and currently pulls in over 8,000 megawatts of wind power.

The wind power from the Roscoe Wind Complex is enough to power about 230,000 homes, but the lack of transmission lines available to transport wind power from its less-inhabited West Texas starting points to more populated areas could prevent more large-scale wind farms from moving in, at least until more lines are built.

Powered by Bookmarkify™