The lone wind turbine in Libertyville has riled neighbors and created enough negative energy that the village board decided to put the brakes on any plans for new ones. While applications can be made, no building permits or zoning certificates for additional turbines will be issued for six months, the village board unanimously decided Tuesday.

District 300 would shoulder 80 percent of the costs - as well as potential benefits and decision-making - associated with the consortium that would build wind turbines to generate the electricity. Dave Ulm, the district's energy coordinator, said the entire project is estimated to cost between $46 million and $50 million.

A Kane County judge has assigned himself to a case in which a citizen's group is trying to halt construction of a wind farm in southwestern DeKalb County. But no firm date has been set for arguments in the case. Citizens for Open Government wants a judge to issue a temporary restraining order to stop work on the wind farm project.

A settlement agreement has been reached in the lawsuit filed to halt a $120 million wind farm project between Freeport and Dakota, and construction on the farm may begin as soon as 2011, said company officials. "By this late time, it would be difficult to build in 2010, because of the long lead time for ordering equipment," said Wanda Davies, director of development for the Midwest region for Gamesa Energy.

Navitas Energy has been dotting the northwestern Illinois landscape with wind turbines for six years. Now the company is looking to make a southwestern section of Winnebago County part of its next wind farm project. Problem is, until Navitas came knocking, county government never had a reason to figure out where wind farms should go, what they should look like or what restrictions should be placed on them.

When state Sen. Michael Noland and state Rep. Fred Crespo went to bat for wind power last year, they predicted a hard-fought battle against Illinois' electric utilities. They were right. The freshman state lawmakers and the more than 60 Illinois school districts that supported their efforts effectively lost that battle when a state House committee ...voted against sending their bill to the full House for a vote. ...Undeterred, three suburban school districts are considering a different strategy that would allow them to exploit wind power within the existing legal framework.

Three different companies are considering placing towering wind turbines on property leased from farmers and other Edgar County landowners. Indeck Energy Services, based in Buffalo Grove, is looking at potential turbine locations north of Kansas, while Eco Energy, based in Elgin, and Horizon Wind Energy, based in Houston, Texas, are looking at sites in northern Edgar County.

After hearing a litany of complaints about noise from angry neighbors of an industrial wind turbine, village trustees Tuesday promised to initiate a temporary moratorium at their next meeting on granting any more such permits until the noise problem is resolved. ...Sandra Cooper said she moved to the subdivision seeking peace and quiet. Instead, her ability to enjoy her home has been constantly sullied "by a most abusive sound" coming from the turbine.

It is also an emerging technology that few Lake County officials know much about, or know how much to trust. According to some, electricity-generating windmills are becoming less like the gargantuan eyesores most are familiar with, and more like the aesthetic afterthoughts that suburbanites would be comfortable to live with. A small, quiet, discreet windmill can cut owners' electricity bills and punch their tickets onto the green bandwagon -- if it indeed works as advertised.

A group of DeKalb County residents is suing the county over a wind farm that is set to be erected this year. County Planner Paul Miller announced the lawsuit, filed Tuesday by about three dozen people belonging to the anti-wind farm group Citizens for Open Government, to the county's planning and zoning committee, which met Wednesday.

The chairman of Woodford County's Conservation, Planning and Zoning Committee started Tuesday's meeting on an uncomfortable note when a resident asked him point-blank if he would resign. Vicky Kingdon, who read from a prepared statement, said Terry Pille should step down as a County Board member. She said he had a conflict of interest resulting from his involvement in a wind farm project in the county.

Construction on a 100-turbine wind farm in the Carlock area is expected to start later this year. "We hope to start construction this year and be online by 2010," said Gina Wolf, director of business development for Invenergy of Chicago, which is developing the White Oak Energy Center. Ground grading is under way for a substation that will collect the wind turbine power and send it to the purchaser.

After neighbors reported a gravel road was being built without proper permits, a company that is building a wind farm in southwestern DeKalb County halted construction until it gets the required permits. ...Planning department staff ordered that the work stop, and the company readily complied.

Talk about a bad Internet connection. Operators and engineers at a wind turbine off Interstate 55 near Farmersville said Thursday they hope the blades are turning for good after a weeklong shutdown caused by an interruption of high-speed Internet connections, among other problems. ...A faulty generator wire had been repaired Thursday, and adjustments also were being made to equipment that protects the turbine from lightning.

There was little air movement in the hot, stuffy gymnasium of Fieldcrest High School on Wednesday night, but proponents of wind energy won a victory when Woodford County officials unanimously recommended that Navitas Energy be allowed to build a 100-turbine wind farm called Minonk Wind Farm LLC. Seventy-five turbines would be in Woodford County, and the rest in Livingston County. The wind farm is expected to generate 200 megawatts of electricity annually.

Just days after the DeKalb County Board approved the county's first wind farm, its Planning and Zoning Committee will recommend to the full board a three-year moratorium on expansion or new wind farms. The committee approved the recommendation Wednesday by a 7-1 vote, with John Hulseberg casting the dissenting vote.

On the eve of public hearings on its proposal to build two separate wind farms in rural Minonk, Navitas Energy Inc. is hosting a picnic-style open house from 5 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Westside Park pavilion at the corner of Fifth and Washington. ...Wind farms have been the target of objections and protests. Concerns range from aesthetics to the possibility ice debris will be thrown from turbine blades.

The DeKalb County Board granted permission in a 16-4 vote Wednesday for a wind energy company to build and operate 119 turbines in western portions of the county. The company plans to move dirt before the end of the month, and a group of neighboring landowners vehemently opposed to the wind farm say that a lawsuit may soon be filed.

The DeKalb County Board is expected to vote Wednesday on a special-use permit to the project's investors, NextEra Energy Resources. The permit comes with 34 conditions meant to benefit DeKalb residents with property near the turbines. Those include a guarantee to offset additional costs for crop spraying, a process for property owners who have unexpected problems with the turbines on their land, and a property value guarantee. ...None of the above conditions were requested or required by the Lee County Board, which approved its special-use permit in February.