The final wind generators in Minnesota Power’s Bison Energy Center wind farm in North Dakota have been turned on and are sending electricity to the Northland.

Bison 4, with its 64 wind turbines, completes Minnesota Power’s current plans for the North Dakota wind farm that now totals nearly 500 megawatts of wind-driven electricity from 165 generators.

The Bison project is the largest wind farm in North Dakota and now ranks Duluth-based Minnesota Power as one of the nation’s 10 largest wind utilities.

The electricity moves across a 465-mile direct current utility line from near New Salem, N.D., to Duluth and is part of Minnesota Power’s long-range plans to move away from coal-fired electricity to a mix of renewable energy, natural gas and coal.

“We’ve made significant strides over the last eight years to bring our energy generation into better balance,” said Al Hodnik, CEO of Minnesota Power’s parent company, Allete, in a statement.

The utility says it already has reached the Minnesota state mandate to produce 25 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025, a full decade early.

Bison 4 was a $345 million investment for Minnesota Power. The company started building the first phase of the Bison project in 2010 and has invested more than $800 million combined in the four phases.