Acciona Energy has started construction on its first Oklahoma wind project. The $250 million Red Hills Wind Farm, a 123-megawatt facility located near Elk City, will include 82 turbines.

When complete, the wind farm will be able to produce enough energy to power 40,000 homes.

Seventy of the 1.5 megawatt turbines will be in Roger Mills County, while 12 will be in Custer County.

"Just as Oklahoma is well known for its oil and natural gas reserves, it will also come to be known for its incredible wind reserves," said Kimberly L. Smith, the vice president for construction and O&M services for Acciona Energy North America.

According to AP, the construction of the wind farm will involve leveling the ground at the turbine sites, laying tower foundations, constructing access roads and operations buildings, developing distribution and transmission lines and erecting the support towers.

As per the information available, 34 of the 1.5-MW turbines will be produced at the new manufacturing facility in West Branch, Iowa, while the rest are to be manufactured at Acciona's plant in Spain.

The West Branch facility will also begin manufacturing in 2009 the AW-3000, a 3 MW turbine that "offers superior power performance in a variety of wind resource conditions," according to spokesperson Kate Guerin. 

Using many of the same technologies as its smaller counterpart — the AW-1500 — the AW-3000 will have three different rotor diameters, from 100 to 116 meters, with a total "swept surface area" of up to 10,568 meters square, reported westbranchtimes.com. The West Branch plant will produce both the AW-1500 and the AW-3000 models, for an annual production capacity of 850 MW a year. Currently, the company can put out about 675 MW a year.