Mississippi just got its first utility-scale wind farm

“The Delta wind project is a key part of our efforts to build a sustainable economy in the Mississippi Delta that benefits everyone,” Tunica County Administrator Billy Willis said in a statement. He said he hopes for a groundbreaking project ​“can be a catalyst for accelerating renewable energy and economic development across the South.”

Mississippi is turning to wind energy as larger U.S. industries recover from a period of slow growth.

Over the past year, skyrocketing costs, supply chain issues and regulatory approval delays have hampered project implementation. New ground installations collapsed 27 percent to 6,400 MW (6.4 gigawatts) in 2023 compared to 2022by Wood Mackenzie. But this year, analysts predict that it will 7 GW According to Reuters, onshore wind projects will be installed once confidence returns to the sector.

Meanwhile, developers are working to install hundreds of megawatts of offshore wind farms along the U.S. East Coast.

The Delta wind farm also comes as Amazon and other major tech companies like Google and Microsoft support more renewable energy projects and fund cutting-edge technologies to power their rapidly expanding footprint while meeting corporate climate goals. These companies are often drawn to the Southeast because of relatively cheap land and electricity, and their investments help catalyze the development of new renewable energy sources in the region.

Earlier this year, Amazon Web Services said it planned to invest $10010 billion dollars to build two data center complexes in Mississippi, representing the largest single capital investment in the state’s history. Bottom line, Amazon said it was supportive thirty wind and solar projects in the Southeast that, once fully operational, will have enough capacity to power over 713,000 homes in the US every year.

Together with the new one 484-MW wind farm, Mississippi at least installed 577 MW solar capacity – an amount that could increase significantly if the Soul City Solar project goes ahead as planned near Jackson, the capital.

Electricity from the Delta wind project will technically be fed into the local grid, providing enough power for 80,000 houses. But Amazon deals with it AES will help offset some of the tech giant’s growing electricity demand in the region while also helping to clean up the grid overall, said Rubin, who declined to disclose the value of the power purchase agreement with Amazon.

He expressed hope that Mississippi’s first wind farm would release more energy ​““thinking creatively” about how to build clean energy projects in areas that have traditionally been difficult to develop, but where energy demand will skyrocket.

“We want to apply the lessons learned to prove that the technology can work in these kinds of difficult areas,” Rubin said, adding: ​“We are very optimistic about the region.”