I remember driving through the Tehachapi Pass is Southern California and seeing the giant wind turbines. I told my young daughter that those were the propellers attached to the Earths engines. That’s what makes the world go around. Well, I guess I wasn’t to far off. Those giant wind turbines make electricity that can run millions of home.

You can see them everywhere in Southern California, and some in the Bay Area. Now California has big plans for more turbines on the horizon.

Breaking ground for the largest wind power project in the country, the Alta Wind Energy Center will build enough turbines to supply more than 600,000 homes in Southern California with electricity. Terra-Gen, a New York based energy company, is building Alta Wind Energy as a collection of wind farms. It has already started construction on the first group of the five farms.

The multibillion-dollar farm is about 75 miles north of Los Angeles in the Mojave Desert,. According to experts, once completed, this 3,000 megawatt (MW) initiative could supply 3times as much energy as the country’s largest existing wind farm, the Roscoe Wind Farm in Texas.

The Alta Wind Energy Center is expected ultimately to provide up to 3,000 MW of pollution-free electrical generating capacity, 1,550 MW of which will fulfill a power purchase agreement signed with Southern California Edison in 2006. With 720 MW of wind power, the initial projects will increase the installed wind capacity in California by more than 25 percent.

Currently, the U.S. lags behind other countries in its renewable energy operations. China spent $16 Billion more in energy investments than the U.S. The Alta Wind Energy Center, in California, is just the first of some renewable investments to come. The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory has a goal to transform 20 percent of the electric energy to wind power by 2024.

So now when I drive pass the giant wind turbines I can honestly say that these “Propellers” are what makes the world go around.