Xcel Energy has taken its first significant step toward its goal of owning more wind power.

That step came last month, when the Grand Meadow Wind Farm became fully operational.

The 100.5-megawatt wind farm is the first Xcel Energy owns in Minnesota; the company purchases the rest of the wind-powered generation on its system in the Upper Midwest. The EDF Energies Nouvelles Company enXco built the Grand Meadow Wind Farm under contract with Xcel Energy and transferred ownership of the 67 turbines to Xcel Energy in late December. The farm became commercial, selling electricity to the regional transmission grid, Dec. 4.

“Developing this renewable resource will both protect the environment while meeting our customers’ growing needs for electricity.”

With the addition of the Grand Meadow project, Xcel Energy now has more than 1,200 megawatts of wind-powered generation on its Upper Midwest system. The company plans to have approximately 4,000 megawatts of wind power capacity in the Upper Midwest and 7,000 megawatts company-wide by 2020.

“The Grand Meadow Wind Farm represents a major milestone in our strategy to diversify our renewable efforts to include ownership along with traditional purchases and purchases from small developers through Minnesota’s Community-Based Energy Development program,” Sparby said.

In 2008, the American Wind Energy Association ranked Xcel Energy as the nation’s No. 1 wind power provider in the United States for the third consecutive year.

Meanwhile, the company announced plans in October to own two more proposed wind farms: a 201-megawatt project in Nobles County in southwestern Minnesota and a 150-megawatt project in Dickey and McIntosh counties in southeastern North Dakota. The projects will be developed and built by enXco and are expected to be operational by the end of 2010 and 2011, respectively.

“The working relationship enXco has with Xcel Energy is outstanding as evidenced by the 334 megawatts previously developed under power purchase agreements, in addition to Grand Meadow and the 351 megawatts we agreed to develop, build and deliver to Xcel Energy in 2010 and 2011,” said Tristan Grimbert, president and CEO of enXco.