Medicine Bow Wind Project, Wyoming

This was one of the early large-scale wind operations in the USA, and the first in Wyoming, and was a rare foray into the industry by the federal government. The early windmills were operated by the Bureau of Reclamation as the Medicine Bow Wind Project. In 1982 the world’s largest wind turbine went online here, the WTS-4, built by Hamilton Standard, which was nearly 400 feet tall, with 250 foot long blades, capable of generating 4 megawatts. It was damaged in a storm in 1994, and is now shut down. The current collection of windmills (electricity producing wind powered turbines) sprung up mostly in the 1990s, to take advantage of the bare hills and windy conditions here, near the continental divide.