Assessment of the visual impact of offshore wind farms

Abstract

The decarbonization of energy power generation is the main ambition globally. In this new era, the development of offshore wind farms (OWFs) will play a vital role. So, the social acceptability of the deployment of offshore wind farms has to be investigated in detail.The principal goal of this study is to test existing tools for the assessment of the visual impact due to an OWF. Improvements were also suggested, when it was found that the factors did not correspond to reality.The adopted methodology compared the results from the original Spanish method, Spanish method II, Greek legislation, local people surveys, and innovative combinations of scenarios to minimize the visual impact. The software tools AutoCAD, ArcGIS, and Google Earth were also employed.The study area is Kissamos, Western Crete. The results showed that the original Spanish method had a deviation of 88.0% from the public opinion and, hence, the method requires improvements according to today's data. On the contrary, one of the new suggested scenarios was verified to be more concise and accurate, reaching a deviation of 19.7%.