Is there any money to be made in investing in wind power?

I haven't given this wind power much thought other than for its possibility that it could drive down the overall electric bill. Whether or not this current proposal (and all of its related discussion) ever gets some wind in its sails remains to be seen. I would imagine the cost for creating an private on-shore wind farm would probably be cost prohibitive. But in the efforts to save some of the farmland downstate, would it be so bad if (rather than development), a couple public power companies opened up shop?

I'm not familiar enough with the electricity industry or how exactly the industry works to make a decision one way or the other as to whether this idea could work. I see it as a potential growth area for the private sector to jump in and splash around for a bit if it is in fact possible. The fact that nobody really has yet, however, leads me to think the industry is even more regulated than I thought. Given the rising cost of electricity, though, something needs to happen and at least people are talking about methods to drive down the costs.

I would think that it would be in everyone's best interest to require all new developments to implement some sort of centralized electrical service (e.g., solar power cells powering the development or geothermal power) in an effort to defray the costs. There's probably more to this idea as well, and I'll simply have to keep my ears to the ground to see if anybody makes any headway into it.