Environmental impacts of wind farms

When I talk about my job with people coming from different businesses I receive often question linked to the “environmental impact” of wind turbines.

This term include various effect related to the construction of a wind farm. They can be summarized in the following categories:

Visual impact

Are wind turbines ugly or not? This is a difficult question. Probably I’m biased, but I think they are beautiful – or at least, better than a nuclear plant, unless you like concrete cooling towers. Some nacelles shape have been designed by artist (like the first Acciona models) or architects, like Enercon’s egg shaped solution. It has been designed by Sir Norman Foster and has been awarded with the Design Council Millennium Products Award, the same prize given to beautiful stuff like the Lotus Elise.

However in several countries a specific study is done to evaluate the visual impact of the turbines. There are several indicator and methodologies, however this is usually done considering the “weighted” average height of the horizon before and after the construction of the wind farms.

Noise generation

New generation turbines use a lot of tricks to keep noise low. Noise is coming above all from the tip of the blade, being the rotating equipment in the nacelle only a secondary source. The “easy” way to limit noise is limit the tip speed of the blade. Other strategies involve special profiles for the blade and software control of the machine to limit noise emission when needed (usually during the night, and/or when the wind is blowing from specific directions).

Electromagnetic interferences

This is easy to measure. In general electricity is generated at a low voltage (around 700 Volt) and MV cables are buried, so this impact is negligible.

Shadow flickering

This is the risk that someone living near the wind farm could experience, for a prolonged length of time, the intermittent shadow of the blades passing in front of the sun. This impact is relatively easy to simulate: there are software that, given the position of the turbines and the meteorological parameters (wind direction, percentage of sunny days) calculate the amount of time an observer located somewhere near the turbine would experience the flickering.

Bird strikes

One of the most discussed issues. You will find quite a lot of studies online, done in countries were wind energy and environmental sensibility is well developed (US, Germany, Spain, etc.). In general my impression is that, compared with other causes of bird death (hunt, high buildings, traffic, etc.), impact with turbine is accountable for a very small percentage.

Additionally modern wind turbines can be equipped with a lot of technology that minimize this risk (bat detectors, LIDAR systems, artificial vision, etc.). I had the pleasure of working at projects were the space between machine was large enough to lower the risk of impact, and additionally the turbines were stopped when migrating birds approaching the wind farms were detected.

 

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