If you look out the windows at Heartland College you can't help but see them. If you look east from State Farm Corporate South you also See them.

What are they? Wind Farms.

As any native of central Illinois can tell you it gets a tad windy in Bloomington/Normal, enough so that it is nicknamed "the Little Windy City".

Taking advantage of this fact to generate clean energy for hundreds of thousands of houses by supplying that energy to Exelon Energy Corporation are the local wind farms that have popped up in Arrowsmith, Saybrook, Ellsworth, and more recently in Carlock.

Making use of a clean renewable energy source helps reduce our dependence on oil and coal, and as technological advances are made becomes more and more economically feasible.

Not only do these project produce energy but they also produce jobs and other additional financial benefits for the local economies of the towns they are near.

Wikipedia.org has a list of wind farms in the United States here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wind_farms_in_the_United_States

To find out more information about the multiple farms east of Bloomington/Normal, Horizon Wind Energy's website can be located here: http://www.horizonwind.com/home/

The project in Carlock has changed hands several times, but more information can be located in Wind Power Monthly: http://www.windpowermonthly.com/news/1048378/Invenergy-sellls-150MW-project-NextEra/