Companies down in the American south seem to know which way the wind is blowing.

Florida's FPL Energy said today that it plans to add 8,000 to 10,000 megawatts of new wind projects to its portfolio by 2012.

Over in Texas, Shell WindEnergy and Luminant just announced a joint development agreement for a 3,000 MW wind project on the Texas Panhandle.

And yet another recently announced single wind farm project planned for the Panhandle would generate up to 4,000 MW.

"Wind is not the only solution, but it's certainly part of the solution, and that's part of what you're seeing with wind power," said Steven Stengel, spokesman for FPL Energy.

FPL Energy, part of the FPL Group (NYSE: FPL [1]), already has a pipeline of wind projects representing more than 14,000 MW in various stages of development and more than one million acres of land under its control across the U.S.

FPL, which serves more than 4.3 million utility customers in Florida and has approximately 13,300 megawatts of generation capacity in 24 states, gets about 30% of that power from wind.

"Clearly the wind strategy that we announced today will be a significant driver of the overall growth of FPL Energy through that 2012 timeline," Stengel told the Cleantech Group.

The company raised its 2008 forecast on the expected strength of the new wind capacity, to a range of $3.70 to $3.90 per share from a range of $3.60 to $3.80.

FPL announced the expanded wind development goals today, as part of its second quarter earnings report.

This year, the company has more than 1,000 MW of new wind projects under construction, all of which are expected to reach commercial operation by the end of the year.

The cost of the new wind generation has yet to be determined.

FPL plans to add 1,500 MW to 2,000 MW per year of new wind projects from 2009 to 2012.

The Shell and Luminant project, announced on Friday, would be built in Briscoe County, southeast of Amarillo.

And low wind might not be an issue for this ambitious venture, with both companies saying they plan to explore the use of compressed air storage.

Luminant's Tom Kleckner said other companies have such storage systems in operation on a small scale in Alabama and Iowa.

Boston startup General Compression is working on that type of system, where excess power could be used to pump air underground for later use (see General Compression aims to double wind farm profits [2]).

General Compression spokeswoman Jenny Viscarolasaga told the Cleantech Group the company is not involved in the Shell/Luminant project.

The state's current capacity is 3,352 MW, which ranks Texas No. 1 in the nation, ahead of California.

Shell and Luminant have yet to determine the cost of the project, but the Brisco County wind farm is expected to have more than 1,000 turbines when complete, according to Kleckner.

Shell WindEnergy, a division of Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS-B [3]), and Luminant, a TXU subsidiary (NYSE: TXU [4]), plan to work together on other renewable energy projects in Texas.

The daddy of them all could be Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens' 4,000-MW wind farm, announced last month.

If completed, it is to be the world's single largest, with as many as 2,000 turbines on nearly 200,000 acres in four counties.

The project would have the capacity to generate 2,000 to 4,000 megawatts and would cost as much as $6 billion, including transmission lines to carry the power to the state's main power grid.

Picken's Mesa Power is among several companies that have put in bids to the state's Public Utility Commission to build transmission lines to connect the growing number of wind farms in West Texas to the major urban areas.

Texas has more than 30 wind farms operating or under construction.

FPL Energy's 735.5-megawatt Horse Hollow project is currently the world's largest.

FPL has submitted a proposal to invest $635 million to $655 million in a high-voltage transmission line.

The record at Horse Hollow is safe for now, as construction on the Pickens' project isn't set to begin until 2010, and would take several years to finish.

FPL isn't likely to sit on its laurels, with Stengel saying that the company's "pipeline will get bigger," and that the company will be acquiring additional acres of land.

"As you've seen in many states there's been a reluctance to build coal powered plants, and the power needs to come from somewhere," he said.