SunZia went into service in June 2026 after roughly two decades of permitting, litigation and construction. It is two projects financed as one: a 3,515 MW wind farm in central New Mexico and a 550-mile high-voltage direct current line that carries 3,000 MW of it to the Pinal Central Substation in Arizona. The combined financing closed in December 2023 at about $11 billion.
Project Scope
The line is a plus-or-minus 525 kV bipolar HVDC link on 2,162 structures, a mix of lattice towers and monopoles, crossing eight New Mexico counties and five in Arizona. Hitachi Energy supplied voltage-source converter technology at both ends, making this one of the largest VSC-HVDC installations in the United States. Quanta Services built the line and, with Hitachi, the converter stations. Blattner, a Quanta subsidiary, handled the wind facility EPC.
The generation side is 916 turbines: 674 GE Vernova 3.6-154 machines for about 2.4 GW and 242 Vestas V163 units at 4.5 MW each for roughly 1.1 GW. That order is the largest onshore turbine purchase in the history of both manufacturers. On completion the wind farm is the largest in the western hemisphere, more than triple the next-largest US project.
Why It Matters
The engineering was never the hard part. SunZia was originally approved as an AC line by the Arizona Corporation Commission in 2016 after a ten-year permitting process, then amended to a point-to-point DC configuration, which triggered its own round of challenges. The Tohono O’odham Nation and San Carlos Apache Tribe sued over cultural and religious sites in the San Pedro Valley; BLM briefly halted work in November 2023, and the Ninth Circuit reversed a district court dismissal on 27 May 2025 and sent the case back down, where it remained active into 2026.
For anyone bidding long linear infrastructure, that is the schedule. Two decades from planning to energisation, with the construction window itself under three years. The route, not the design, is what takes the time.
Project Team & Details
| Developer | Pattern Energy Group LP |
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| Owner / Client | Pattern Energy Group LP |
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| General Contractor | Quanta Services (line construction); Quanta and Hitachi Energy consortium (converter stations) |
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| Major Subcontractors | Blattner Company (Wind Facility EPC)
Hitachi Energy (HVDC Converter Technology)
GE Vernova (Wind Turbines)
Vestas (Wind Turbines) |
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| Status | Completed |
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| Delivery Method | Design-Build |
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| Funding Source | Private |
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