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Stephanie Hemphill
St. Paul, Minn.

Xcel ready to build wind farm in SW Minnesota

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Xcel Energy and a partner will break ground in April on a wind farm in Nobles County in southwestern Minnesota.

The project will use 134 turbines to create enough electricity to power about 50,000 homes.

Xcel Energy Regional Vice President Laura McCarten says construction will employ 150 workers, and the project will be finished in less than a year.

"That's much different than our experience, obviously, building any of our other more typical power plants such as a natural gas plant, let alone coal or nuclear. They can go up quickly," said McCarten.

McCarten says Xcel is more than halfway to its state-mandated goal of 30 percent renewable power by 2020.

Xcel's partner in the wind farm is enXco, a California-based developer of renewable energy projects.