USA onshore
16 years on: making the SunZia gigaproject a reality
Following the groundbreaking closure of a record-setting $11 billion in financing late last year, full construction is well underway on Pattern Energy’s SunZia Wind and SunZia Transmission, which comprise the biggest clean energy infrastructure project yet undertaken in the USA. Completion is anticipated in 2026.
T
he 3515 MW SunZia Wind facility, thought to be the largest onshore wind project in the Western
Hemisphere, is being constructed across Torrance, Lincoln, and San Miguel Counties in New Mexico. The power it generates will be routed from New Mexico to south- central Arizona via the 3000 MW SunZia Transmission bi-directional HVDC link, a 550 mile (885 km) ±525 kV connection. Pattern acquired the link development project from SouthWestern Power Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of MMR Group, in 2022. SunZia Transmission had previously awarded the full 3 GW of capacity on the transmission line to Pattern Energy. “It feels great to be through the financing and on to the build”, said Hunter Armistead, CEO of Pattern Energy, speaking at CERAWeek in Houston in March. But currently “the pace of load growth is like nothing we have ever seen” and future such projects must not take 16 years to get to this point, as SunZia has. Talking about lessons learned from his experience of getting the project over the line to the build phase, he said “collaboration is key”, for example, with NGOs, local communities, lenders and contractors. He particularly recommends “having a deep and early partnership with the people who are actually going to build it” and having “personal relationships that go all the way up to the most senior levels of those contractors.” For a very large project such as SunZia this becomes “developing a relationship of mutually assured destruction”, ie “this deal either happens or we all fall down.”
For SunZia, the wind turbines are being supplied by Vestas and GE Vernova and the HVDC technology supplier is Hitachi Energy. The EPC contractor for the
36 SAN MIGUEL Albuquerque TORRANCE Phoenix LINCOLN PINAL GRANT GRAHAM PIMA Tuscon COCHISE HIDALGO LUNA Silver City Las Cruces SIERRA
SunZia Wind
transmission line is Quanta Infrastructure Services Group and for the wind project is Blattner Energy, a Quanta affiliated company. SunZia Transmission and Pattern Energy have partnered with the New Mexico Renewable Energy Transmission Authority (RETA) on the development of the New Mexico part of the transmission line.
As to wind turbine selection, Hunter Armistead said the project had “ended up basically with turbines nearly designed perfectly for our site.” He noted that the “turbine world has gone through a tough time” and costs have gone up significantly, contributing to SunZia project cost escalation. “But we went in early with both our vendors, and we started talking about exactly what [the SunZia] wind resource is…it’s very low turbulence, very consistent flow, but relatively high altitude…And so we worked with both vendors.” Initially “they both wanted the whole thing, but I think in the end they were real happy with the way it worked out, two thirds to one [GE] and one third to the other [Vestas].”
Vestas is supplying 242 of its V163- 4.5 MW wind turbines, its “newest high- capacity factor” machine, totalling 1089 MW of installed capacity. The Vestas scope includes
commissioning of the turbines, as well as a multi-year Active Output Management 5000 (AOM 5000) service agreement, designed to ensure optimised performance. This is Vestas’ first onshore order of more than 1 GW in the US market and follows its recent commitment to invest USD 40 million in its US domestic footprint to manufacture the V163-4.5 MW turbine. The V163-4.5 MW turbine is based on
Vestas’ proven 4 MW platform and leverages an established supply chain. The design takes into account US conditions, the company notes, addressing transportation, installation, and operational aspects to support the rapid deployment of wind energy in response to growing demand. GE Vernova is supplying 674 of its 3.6-154 “next generation workhorse turbine”, installed capacity 2.4 GW.
World Wind Technology
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