Journal article

Publication year: 2024

Journal: Energy

Volume number: 293

ISSN: 0360-5442

eISSN: 1873-6785

Open access status: Hybrid

DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2024.130699

Publisher: Elsevier

Abstract: 
Citizens may experience discomfort from the feeling of being surrounded by wind power turbines in their municipalities. This effect, usually called "encirclement", should be prevented during any wind farm planning process. Therefore, there need to be reliable rules for how much encirclement is tolerable and how much is too much. In addition to rules, it is necessary to be able to quantify encirclement accurately. While there is a method to do so currently at hand, that method has several shortcomings. We provide an updated approach that helps drawing a more realistic picture of the actual encirclement situation. In this article, we introduce our GIS (Geographic Information System) procedure. Essentially, the basic idea is to evaluate the sight of wind turbines from points-of-view along a path around the perimeter of a given municipality. We then evaluate the algorithm with some real-world data to also compare our method to the former approach and find that our approach distinguishes between "encircled"or not in a somewhat more strict fashion than the former method does.

Harvard Citation style: Croonenbroeck, C. and Hennecke, D. (2024) Quantifying the municipal encirclement effect of wind turbines, Energy, 293, Article 130699. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2024.130699

APA Citation style: Croonenbroeck, C., & Hennecke, D. (2024). Quantifying the municipal encirclement effect of wind turbines. Energy. 293, Article 130699. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2024.130699