FOWLER, Ind. — Northwestern Indiana is where the state’s first commercial-scale wind farm went up and soon the region will have another one churning out electricity – with help from online retailer giant Amazon.

Pattern Energy Group, which has about a dozen wind power projects in the United States, Canada and Chile, is partnering with Amazon in a wind farm development in Benton County.

“They kind of teamed up with them to make it financially feasible to get the development going,” said Kelly Kepner, director of the Benton County Economic Development Office.

She said the development plan contains more than 60 turbines on a site 7-by-8 miles long inside the borders of three adjacent townships. About 150 megawatts of electricity, enough to power more than 40,000 homes, will be produced.

In 2008, Benton County became home to the state’s first wind farm. Two others have since come online and combined they generate 836 megawatts of electricity, said Kepner.

Pattern Energy will join Orion Energy, BP and enXco as producers of wind-generated electrical power in Benton County, which currently has 495 wind turbines – among the highest concentrations anywhere in the country. Kepner said construction could be completed as soon as late this year or sometime in 2016.

“Hopefully, in the next couple of months they’ll start construction. We’re in the early stages of this, still,” she said.

Currently, Kepner said wind farms in Benton County employ nearly 100 people, a sizable figure, given fewer than 9,000 people live in the county, which is heavy on agriculture. Without getting too specific, Kepner said Amazon is providing help with the development both financially and as a customer.

According to media agencies including CNBC, Amazon is financing the project in order to power its massive cloud computing business with renewable energy. Amazon Web Services is billed as one of the largest providers of cloud computing services, with customers that include Johnson & Johnson, Dole and Netflix.

The Benton County development is reported to be Amazon’s first major renewable energy project since November, when it vowed to power its cloud computing division with renewable energy. Most of the electricity produced at the new wind farm will be purchased by Amazon under terms of a 13-year contract with Pattern Energy.

Kepner said NIPSCO purchases some of the power generated by the existing farms, while much of the power that goes onto a grid is used on the East Coast, she said. Benton County is considered ideal for wind generation because the land is mostly flat and undeveloped, allowing winds to blow unobstructed.

Chad Martin, renewable energy extension specialist at Purdue University, said wind-generated power in Indiana has become a formidable competitor with electricity produced by burning coal. Several years ago, he said Indiana was tops in the nation for growth in the amount of wind power generated, but the pace leveled off and now has picked up again.

He cannot predict if wind power will ever become the primary source of electricity for Hoosiers. “It’s not going to happen anytime soon, but it’s become more comparative in terms of cost of production in relation to coal over the last several years,” said Martin.

Producing wind power is not cheap, because of the cost and maintenance of the turbines along with land use fees, but the cost has come down and federal tax incentives offered to producers has helped. Long term, Martin said wind power will continue to grow along with solar power to help meet the rising demand for energy across the globe.

Newer technologies are also being developed to produce electricity through other methods to help fill the void. “The growth of wind energy will also take place but everything else will simultaneously have to grow with it to meet those demands,” said Martin.

Andy Dietrick, a spokesman for Indiana Farm Bureau (IFB), said wind farming is not really viewed as agriculture because it has more to do with the utility industry. The connection with ag is the need to locate wind “farms” in areas with much farmland to provide space for turbines that can stand well over 200 feet high to operate, and also the financial benefits to farmers hosting a turbine.

IFB’s role with the industry has mostly to do with making sure the property rights of farmers whose land is used for installing turbines are not infringed upon. “You have to make sure the construction and maintenance does not get in the way with the rest of the acres that’s being worked in that field,” explained Dietrick.