Dec 17 - McClatchy-Tribune Business News Formerly Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News - Anne Cook The News-Gazette, Champaign-Urbana, Ill.

Twin Groves developer Bill Whitlock, who's based at Bloomington, said investment bankers Goldman Sachs Group Inc. started Houston-based Horizon Wind Energy about 19 years ago, making a $2 billion commitment to alternative power.

When both phases of the McLean County project are completed, Whitlock will move to Livingston County to build Horizon's second Illinois project, Blackstone Wind Farm on the Cayuga Ridge just north of Pontiac. That project, which will have up to 200 turbines and cost up to $750 million, is expected to be online by December 2008.

Whitlock said he expects the first phase of Twin Groves to be partially online by the end of January. When they're unlocked, nacelles at the top of the towers will swivel to face into the wind so blades rotate at an optimum speed of about 20 revolutions a minute. High-tech equipment controlling the turbines also has a fail-safe: If the wind's too strong, the system shuts down.

When both phases are completed, they'll produce enough energy to meet the average annual electricity needs of 120,000 homes. Whitlock said that's more than double the 57,000 homes in McLean County.

However, the electricity generated by the wind turbines will be channeled underground to the grid that supplies power to North America, hooking into it at Bentown, and Horizon makes its profits selling to the grid.

Twin Groves is a Vestas installation. That Portland-based Danish wind equipment manufacturer purchased NEG Micon, which had facilities in Champaign and the Chicago area, about two years ago and later closed both Illinois facilities so the McLean County equipment is trucked in from the West Coast.