As I travel through Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas, I see wind farms springing up everywhere. I am always fascinated by these engineering marvels! I recall the first commercial wind generator I saw in the "flesh"; it was in Clayton, New Mexico on the west side of town. It was clearly visible as one drove in on US 64 from Raton; there was a tavern next door called "The Windmill". I went through there the next year and there was a white pole sticking up and three blades laying on the ground next to it. The tavern was closed. The pole was demolished shortly after that.

So wind power development hasn't gone smoothly. There are a lot of technical factors that don't seem obvious at first glance: lateral thrust forces (how hard the wind pushes the mast and individual blades sideways), maximum rotational velocity (how fast and how to limit RPMs), blade balance (an imbalance will cause destructive vibrations), direction control (old water windmills had a "tail" or vane which turned the blades into the wind; modern wind turbines use a motor to rotate the head into the wind), and minimum and maximum windspeeds for production of power. Among many other variables.

Here is a Wikipedia page with overwhelming detail.

Obviously these big projects use a lot of land area. But this land is still available for farming and ranching, as you can see. For safety reasons, urban usage is discouraged as the Clayton experiment illustrated.

These windmills are on the New Mexico Caprock south of San Jon (pronounced hon, Spanish style). San Jon is in far eastern NM along I-40 and Old Route 66.

Or an amphitheater can be under them.  Some of these turbines are on the grounds of the Caprock Amphitheater at the top of San Jon Hill, the south limit of the Canadian River valley. This bluff (below) faces north and is about 500' high.

This is the entrance to the Amphitheater with an old wooden windmill by the gate (left).

This picture on the Amphitheater grounds captures some of the magic of these devices.  But even a video wouldn't capture the play of shadow and light as the huge rotors turn or the mechanical whine of the gearboxes.

I even enjoyed a lunch at the picnic grounds under these two machines.

OK, I am a technogeek or an engineering groupie. Anything complex that works well has my support. (Wait'll you see the set of pictures of a steam turbine overhaul!) Some people complain about esthetics but I could sit on my backporch watching these things for hours!

Beats the oil well that an in-law had just outside his backyard fence in Odessa, TX! Smell better, too.

Another cost of building commercial wind farms (or wind plants, as some in the industry prefer) is a connection to the "grid" or the transmission system. This plant had about 100 1.2 megawatt generators so the connection has to be designed for this max load of 120 megawatts.

Below is the switchyard for this wind farm. I agree about a lack of esthetics of these things.

The juxtaposition of the old barn with the wind turbines in the background illustrates how these two cultures can coexist.

The clustering of the rotor blades was a plus.

OTOH, for various reasons, most wind farms aren't especially welcoming.

The most "user friendly" wind plant I have seen is on the east bluffs of the Pecos River between Taiban and House, NM. The FPL Energy headquarters has a huge display of their facility's details.

A closeup shot of a wind turbine unit.

Warning: Boring engineering stuff follows

The "small" green box at the foot of the post contains the transformer and terminal connections from the nacelle (the housing on top of the tower) to the underground collection system. Every unit has one.

These things are big! 200' towers, 12' rotor blades, and 10 or more RPMs. But I was most impressed with the foundation. A driveway has up to a 1' foundation/footer. A standard house has a foundation 4' or more below the lowest level.  These things have a cylindrical hole 20' or more deep filled with serious rebar reinforced concrete.  For even more details, check out http://www.pincher-creek.com/windenergy/construction_pictorial.htm

By the time they do all the backfilling, all that effort is hidden. And in every wind farm I've seen, all the excavation dirt is gone.

In the middle range of the generating capacity is this typical windmill located in Welch, TX. This is on the county school grounds next to the football stadium. I can't find any details on this unit either at the facility or on the WWW.

It's larger than a domestic unit but hardly in the megawatt range. I'd guess several kilowatts, probably used by the school for electrical cost reduction.

There was no sound even when I was parked on the street next to it. I would guess this one creates DC power which is stored in batteries then converted to DC for facility consumption. (AC units have gearboxes which make audible noise.)

What made this particularly interesting was the fact that Welch is deep in the midst of major Texas oil and gas producing fields. There's even an oil well on the other side of the stadium. I doubt if this unit would supply enough power to run that pumpjack.

The downside of this kind of unit is the fact that the blades are downwind of the tower; this can create vibration problems and shorten the life of the bearings. I am assuming the open frame tower minimizes this problem.

While passing through Gail, TX, I had the amazing fortune of watching two truckloads of rotor blades come through "town". The last picture certainly captures the length of these things! A long semi is 53' long and doesn't need both lanes and the shoulder to turn a corner!

And look at the ring of bolts on the end of the blade! And they're probably 1" bolts.

Addendum: On a trip in February, 2007 I crossed paths with more wind generator components. Two were single blades passing through Big Spring, Texas on extended flatbed trailers, a third was a part of the tower assembly on a flatbed trailer in Big Spring, and another was a massive (but smaller) piece for which the highway was closed by the Brownfield (TX) police to allow its turning. It had the same length trailer but hardly took up half the space on it. Watching the tractor-trailer unit labor, it was obviously very heavy. 

It looked like some kind of really large tapered motor with a stubby shaft out the flat end. My guess is that this had to have been the actual generator. I didn't get a picture since I had filled my "cheap" digital camera (again that day) and hadn't had a chance to download the pictures into my laptop due to the incredible winds at the time.

The largest wind power facility in the USA as of 2008 is in Sweetwater, Texas; a Tabblo of that place is here. And, due to a favorable financial and infrastructure climate from the state, it is still growing.