Nine turbines Spanish Fork
A power station built on a habit rather than a hill
The Spanish Fork Wind Park, and the air it was built to catch.
Nine turbines rated at about 2.1 megawatts each for 18.9 megawatts in total, commissioned in 2008 as Utah's first utility scale wind project, standing on flat ground at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon on 280 foot towers with blade tips reaching roughly 416 feet. Why a canyon mouth beats a ridgeline, who built it and who owns it now, why there is no way to visit it, and what the same air does to an address on the east side of this city.
Southern Utah is my home turf. Spanish Fork is not, so these pages are researched rather than lived: checked against city, county and venue sources, and dated so you can see how fresh they are. For the on-the-ground work here I lean on a Utah County partner agent.
Start here
Nine turbines on flat ground, which is not where wind farms normally go.
Nine turbines stand at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon, rated at about 2.1 megawatts each for 18.9 megawatts in total. They were commissioned in 2008, selling into the PacifiCorp grid by August of that year and formally dedicated in October, and they made this Utah's first utility scale wind project. The towers run about 280 feet, with blade tips reaching roughly 416 feet.
The interesting thing about them is the address. Wind projects are normally built on ridgelines, because ridgelines are where wind reliably is. This one sits on the valley floor at the bottom of a canyon, and it works because the canyon behaves like a nozzle: air drains down it on a daily cycle and pours out across this ground with enough consistency that the project was expected to operate about 80 per cent of the time, powering roughly 6,000 homes.
So the honest way to read the turbines is as an instrument. They are not a monument to anything and they are not, whatever a listing site tells you, somewhere you can go. There is no tour, no visitor centre and no published viewpoint at the site. What they are is a permanent, publicly visible measurement of what the air does at this end of Utah Valley, and that measurement is genuinely useful if you are thinking about an address here.
The wind park in numbers
9
turbines at the canyon mouth
18.9 MW
total rating, about 2.1 MW each
2008
commissioned; Utah's first utility scale wind project
416 ft
approximate blade tip height, on 280 foot towers
The siting argument
A canyon works like a nozzle, and somebody built a power station in front of it.
Cold air is heavy and it runs downhill. A long canyon draining a large area of high country produces that flow on a schedule rather than as an event, and where the canyon narrows and then opens, the air accelerates and spreads. Spanish Fork Canyon does that to a degree that made it worth financing a power station on the ground where the air lands.
That is a substantially different proposition from a ridgetop project. A ridge catches whatever the regional weather is doing, which is variable. A canyon mouth catches a local circulation that repeats, and repeatability is what makes an expected 80 per cent operating figure possible. The turbines here are not standing in Utah's windiest place; they are standing in one of its most predictable ones.
The everyday version of that same physics shows up in places you would not expect to find a meteorological statement. The city golf course, sitting on ground below the canyon mouth barely a stone's throw from the turbines, notes in its own materials that the ground can be windy in the mornings and late afternoons. That is a description of a daily cycle, written by people trying to sell tee times, and it agrees exactly with the siting case for the wind farm.
It also explains why the wind story here is so often told badly. A canyon drainage wind is not a storm and it is not an anomaly. It is a feature of the ground, it favours particular hours, and it lands harder on the eastern side of the city than the western. Anyone describing it as extreme weather has confused a rhythm with an event.
The turbines are not there because it is windy. They are there because it is windy on a timetable, which is a different and much more valuable thing.
Who built it and who has it now
Three names in eighteen years, and the last one is worth re-checking.
This project has passed through a developer, a builder and at least one portfolio owner, which is entirely normal for utility scale renewables and entirely confusing if you are trying to work out who to ring. Here is the trail as far as it is documented.
| The question | What the record says | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Who developed it | Wasatch Wind, a Utah developer | Contemporary reporting from 2008 |
| Who built it | Edison Mission Group, which took the project over; construction began October 2007 | Deseret News coverage, 2008 |
| When it started generating | Selling into the PacifiCorp grid by August 2008, with a formal dedication that October | Deseret News, 29 August and 8 October 2008 |
| Who owns it now | Clearway Energy Group LLC, with the legal entity named as Spanish Fork Wind Park 2 LLC | Global Energy Monitor, checked 14 August 2026 |
| Is it still running | Yes. Trackers derived from federal generation data reported 10.2 GWh across March to June 2025 | EIA derived generation trackers |
| Can the public visit | No tour, viewpoint or public access appears on any official source | Nothing published; treat as a drive by landmark |
Ownership and generation record as compiled by Global Energy Monitor and contemporary reporting, checked 14 August 2026. Renewable portfolios trade frequently and the operating entity behind a project of this size can change without any local announcement, so the owner named here should be re-verified before it is quoted anywhere it matters. The generation figures are derived from federal reporting rather than published by the operator.
There is no public access at the wind park, and no verified dated incident of wind damage in this city either. No official source describes a tour, a visitor centre or a designated viewpoint at the site, so anything presenting the turbines as an attraction you can go to is describing something that does not exist. They are seen from US-6 in passing and that is the whole of it. Separately, and in the other direction, stories about overturned lorries and specific damaging wind events at the canyon mouth circulate widely and none of them resolved to a verifiable dated incident at checking. The honest framing is neither an attraction nor a hazard: this is a steady, well documented, daily canyon breeze strong and reliable enough that Utah's first commercial wind farm was built to catch it.
What it means on the ground
The same air that turns nine blades decides what a Tuesday morning feels like.
This is the part of the wind park story that matters if you are looking at addresses rather than at engineering. The turbines convert a weather reputation into something specific, and specific is what a buyer can actually use.
Take the three facts together. The air moves down the canyon on a daily cycle. It is strong enough and steady enough to run a power station about 80 per cent of the time. And it lands on the ground at the canyon mouth before it reaches anywhere else. That gives you a gradient across the city rather than a single answer: the eastern edge takes it first and hardest, and the western fields take a diluted version of the same thing.
It also gives you a clock. Mornings and late afternoons are when the golf course a few hundred yards from the turbines warns about it, which is exactly when a diurnal circulation would be expected to be working. Middays are calmer. That pattern is why local advice about outdoor plans here is about hours rather than about days.
The season matters too. Canyon drainage winds are most pronounced through the cooler half of the year, so an address inspected on a still afternoon in July has told you very little about the same street in March. That single sentence is the most useful thing on this page for anybody house hunting on the east side of Spanish Fork.
What this page will not do is turn any of that into a warning. There is no verified record of a specific damaging event here, the wind is a working feature that a serious energy project was built around, and treating a documented daily circulation as a hazard would be as inaccurate as pretending it is not there.
The address question
The canyon gateway
Where the wind, the corridor, the city owned wires and the growth front meet on a single page about moving here.
Read the pageNot on the list
The top 11, ranked
The turbines are deliberately absent from the ranked eleven, and the page explains why a landmark without access does not qualify.
The ranked listPast the turbines
Fifth Water Hot Springs
The side canyon walk you drive past these blades to reach, with its live fee and its live advisory.
Read the pageWhere this sits
At the east door of the city, on the ground everything else here drives past.
The canyon mouth is where this companion keeps returning: the golf course, the reservoir, the big park and the road east all sit within sight of these blades. What follows is the rest of it.
In town instead
Fiesta Days
Five nights of PRCA rodeo, a Pioneer Day parade, and a separate county fair on the same ground nine days later.
Read the pageThe south bench
The Krishna Temple
Rajasthani stonework, a llama paddock and a daily buffet on a hilltop at the other corner of the city.
Read the pageThe companion
Spanish Fork, in full
Seven pages on the canyon mouth city, from the temple on the south bench to the road east.
Read the pageKeep reading
More of Spanish Fork on The Local.
Things to do
The top 11, ranked
Eleven entries, each with the body that runs it, its season and what it charges.
Read the guideOpen every day
The Krishna Temple
Rajasthani stonework, a llama paddock, a daily buffet, and doors open every day of the year.
Read the guideUp Diamond Fork
Fifth Water Hot Springs
A live fee, a live algae watch, a lot that tows, and a winter gate that adds eight miles.
Read the guideThe back half of July
Fiesta Days
Five rodeo nights, a Pioneer Day parade at nine, and a county fair a week behind it.
Read the guideMoving here
The canyon gateway
The wind, the widening on US-6, the city owned wires, and where the growth is going.
Read the guideThe companion
Spanish Fork, in full
The temple, the springs, the turbines, the rodeo week and the road east, gathered on one page.
Read the pageQuick answers
The turbines, answered.
Nine, rated at about 2.1 megawatts each for 18.9 megawatts in total, standing at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon. The towers are roughly 280 feet with blade tips reaching about 416 feet. The project was commissioned in 2008, selling into the PacifiCorp grid by that August and formally dedicated in October, which made it Utah's first utility scale wind project. It was expected to operate about 80 per cent of the time and to power roughly 6,000 homes.
Because the canyon behind the city delivers wind on a schedule. Cold air drains down Spanish Fork Canyon on a daily cycle and accelerates as the canyon narrows and opens, so the ground at its mouth receives a repeatable local circulation rather than whatever the regional weather happens to be doing. That predictability is what made a valley floor site worth financing, and it is why the turbines stand on flat ground instead of on a ridgeline where wind projects normally go.
No. There is no tour, no visitor centre and no designated public viewpoint described on any official source for this site, so the honest description is a landmark you see from US-6 rather than somewhere you can go. That is also why the turbines are deliberately absent from the ranked list of things to do in this companion: a page about what to do in a city should not send you to ground you cannot stand on.
Clearway Energy Group LLC as recorded by Global Energy Monitor and checked on 14 August 2026, with the legal entity named as Spanish Fork Wind Park 2 LLC. The trail behind that runs through Wasatch Wind, the Utah developer that originated it, and Edison Mission Group, which took it over and built it with construction starting in October 2007. Renewable portfolios trade often and usually without local announcement, so re-verify the current owner before quoting it.
Yes. Trackers derived from federal generation reporting recorded 10.2 gigawatt hours across March to June 2025, so the project is generating rather than mothballed. Those figures come from derived federal data rather than from the operator's own publications, which is worth noting if the number matters to you. The turbines were built to run about 80 per cent of the time on the canyon's daily drainage wind, and nothing in the public record suggests that has changed.
Windy enough that a power station was built on it, and in a specific pattern rather than at random. The circulation is diurnal, favouring mornings and late afternoons, and it is most pronounced through the cooler half of the year. It also grades across the city: the eastern edge nearest the canyon mouth takes it first and hardest, the western fields take a weaker version. The city golf course, sitting beside the turbines, warns in its own materials that the ground can be windy in the mornings and late afternoons.
No specific dated incident verified when this page was written. Stories about overturned vehicles and damaging gusts at the canyon mouth circulate widely and none of them resolved to a documented event at checking, so this page does not state one. What is documented is the opposite framing: a steady, predictable, daily canyon breeze reliable enough to justify Utah's first commercial wind farm. Treating a rhythm as a hazard is as inaccurate as pretending the rhythm is not there.
Not in the direct sense people usually mean. The project sells into the grid rather than serving a list of local addresses, and it was reported at commissioning as capable of powering roughly 6,000 homes. Spanish Fork residents buy electricity from the city, which is one of six member cities of the Utah Municipal Power Agency, and that is a separate arrangement from the wind park sitting on the ground at the edge of town.
Construction began in October 2007 under Edison Mission Group, and the project was selling into the PacifiCorp grid by August 2008 with a formal dedication that October. That sequence is why you will see both 2007 and 2008 attached to it depending on which milestone a source picked. The distinction that actually matters is that it was Utah's first utility scale wind project, which put nine turbines on the valley floor here before there was a comparable one anywhere else in the state.
Nine blades, and a very good reason they are pointing that way.
The turbines are a landmark you cannot visit and a measurement you can use. If you are looking at streets rather than at engineering, the useful follow up questions are which side of the city a parcel sits on, what an east bench street does in March rather than in July, how the widening programme on US-6 changes the drive east, and what the city owned utility stack looks like once you are the one setting up the account. Tell me what you are weighing and I will put you with a Utah County partner agent who works the south end of this valley, and stay on the file for the financing side.
Referral disclosure. Outside Southern Utah, I connect home sellers and buyers with partner agents I trust in their area. If you choose to work with an agent I refer, that agent's brokerage pays my brokerage (Real Broker, LLC) a referral fee. The fee comes out of the agent's compensation; it is not an added cost to you. You are always free to choose any agent you wish, and using a referred agent is never required.