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PHOENIX — Arizona's largest utility has begun receiving electricity from its newest power source — a just completed wind farm in eastern New Mexico that can supply enough juice for 25,000 homes.

Arizona Public Service Co. officials said 5 megawatts of wind-generated power began flowing into the company's Four Corners station in northwestern New Mexico on Friday.

The power was the company's first from the Aragonne Mesa Wind Farm in eastern New Mexico, which has 90 wind turbines, each 227 feet high, and has a peak output of 90 megawatts of electricity.

"There's really substantial wind out there to say the least," said Keith Hayes, National Weather Service spokesman in Albuquerque, referring to wind farm site 15 miles southwest of the town of Santa Rosa. The Aragonne Mesa site is near the New Mexico Wind Energy Center, which produces 200 megawatts of electricity for PNM Inc., New Mexico's largest electric and gas utility.

The renewable-energy resource is the largest to be tapped by an Arizona utility, but more will be needed. The Arizona Corporation Commission, which regulates the state's utilities, approved a rule in October requiring regulated utilities to get 15 percent of their energy from renewable resources by 2015.

APS will meet that threshold because it also produces 10 megawatts of geothermal power and 6 megawatts of solar power. The new wind power is being purchased under a 20-year contract.

Barbara Lockwood, manager of renewable energy for APS, said the wind-power project is the first of several new alternative-energy projects in the works. She would not disclose how much APS is paying for the New Mexico project.

The utility is working on a plan to partially power some of its conventional power plants with methane from two Phoenix landfills, plans to add a biomass plant at a Snowflake paper-recycling company that cuts burned trees from the area of the enormous Rodeo-Chediski Fire in 2002, and is interested in a wind-generation firm in Kingman, Lockwood said.

"This wind project is significant because of its delivery of the first large amount of renewable energy to the state," Lockwood said. "We are now going to be entering quickly the next phase of our renewables program."

APS is working with Northern Arizona University to study wind patterns in the state to identify future wind-farm sites.

APS has been criticized by the Corporation Commission for not signing a contract with an Arizona company for its first major wind-to-electricity project.

APS serves about 1 million customer accounts in the state including about half of the Phoenix metro area and parts of 11 of the state's 15 counties. Ajo, Bisbee, Douglas and San Manuel are in its territory.