Wind and Solar Leasing in Nolan County, Texas

The scale: three of the country's largest wind farms, over 1,300 turbines

Nolan County hosts more than 1,300 wind turbines, and at least three of the largest wind installations in the United States sit at least partly within the county. The Sweetwater Wind Farm alone comprises 392 turbines generating 585.3 megawatts, fully commissioned by 2007. The Roscoe Wind Complex, which spans Fisher, Mitchell, Nolan, and Scurry Counties (CORRECTED 2026-09, adding Fisher County, which an earlier version of this page omitted from the complex's four-county footprint), anchors a combined 781.5 megawatts of installed capacity across its component projects, making it one of the largest land-based wind developments anywhere in the country. And the Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center -- 291 GE 1.5-megawatt turbines plus 139 Siemens 2.3-megawatt turbines -- spreads across nearly 47,000 acres of Taylor and Nolan Counties together.

For a land buyer, this isn't background noise -- it's the central economic and land-use fact of much of rural Nolan County. A parcel here is meaningfully more likely than almost anywhere else in Texas to already carry a wind-lease agreement, sit adjacent to turbines and their access roads, or be a live prospect for a new lease given how developed the surrounding grid infrastructure already is.

A documented royalty landscape -- and a documented concentration problem

A 2015 academic study by Brannstrom, Tilton, Klein, and Jepson (published via Texas A&M and cataloged on ResearchGate) went further than general wind-industry reporting and specifically mapped and quantified wind-power royalties across Nolan and neighboring Taylor Counties together. The study identified roughly 1,700 turbines, representing approximately 2.7 gigawatts of installed capacity, located on just 241 distinct landholdings across the two counties. Estimated total royalties across those landholdings came to roughly $11.5 million per year, with a mean estimated royalty of $7,404 per turbine per year, and a mean annual royalty received per landowner of $47,879.

The study's most important finding for a prospective buyer, though, isn't the average -- it's the concentration. The researchers found that this $11 million-plus in annual royalty income is captured by only about 3% of rural landowners across the two counties, a pattern they attribute to what they call a "property advantage": pre-existing land-tenure patterns, established well before wind development arrived, that happened to put certain landholdings in the path of turbine siting while leaving most other rural parcels with none. The study terms the resulting mismatch a "royalty paradox" -- local public support for wind power in the region has consistently measured above 70%, even though only a small fraction of landowners actually receive a turbine-related payment.

• Roughly 1,700 turbines and ~2.7 GW of capacity across Nolan and Taylor Counties combined, on 241 distinct landholdings.
• An estimated $11.5 million per year in total royalties, with a mean of $7,404 per turbine per year.
• A mean of $47,879 in annual royalty income per landowner among those actually receiving payments -- but that group represents only about 3% of rural landowners in the two counties.
• The study covers Nolan and Taylor Counties as a combined study area rather than reporting each county's figures separately, so treat these as two-county totals, not a Nolan-only figure.

What this means before you buy: don't assume a parcel carries wind income

Given how concentrated wind royalties are here, the single most important thing a buyer can do is not assume that being "in Nolan County" or even being visually near turbines means a specific parcel carries, or will carry, a wind lease. Confirm directly whether the parcel already has an executed wind-lease or easement agreement recorded against it (check with the county clerk), what stage that lease is in (option, easement, or full operating lease with turbines installed), and what the actual payment terms are -- per-acre, per-turbine, or production-based royalty -- since these structures pay very differently and a per-acre "met tower" or testing-phase payment is a small fraction of what an operating turbine site eventually generates.

If a parcel has no existing lease, treat wind-income potential as speculative rather than a given, even in a county this developed -- new turbine siting still depends on transmission capacity, wind resource quality at that specific site, and a developer's own project economics, none of which are guaranteed just because neighboring parcels already have turbines. Since turbines themselves don't consume groundwater, an existing or prospective wind lease generally doesn't complicate well access on the same parcel, but any lease or easement should still be reviewed by a Texas attorney experienced in wind and renewable-energy agreements before signing -- surface-use terms, access-road easements, decommissioning obligations, and how the agreement runs with the land if you later sell are all standard points worth negotiating rather than accepting a developer's first draft.