Abstract
The political agenda on wind power usage intends its further expansion in a large scale. As most energy sources, wind power can have negative impacts on humans and environment; this expansion can be accompanied by land use conflicts with land uses sensitive to disturbance. During operation, disturbances from noise, shadow, or ice throw can occur. Due to the dimensions of modern wind power systems, wind power farming can pose a threat to birds and bats (collision and avoidance) and may also lead to a change of landscape sceneries, which can cause conflicts with residents, nature conservation, or tourism interests. Therefore, the control of wind power expansions by spatial planning plays a key role for the mitigation of negative impacts as well as for its public acceptance. Spatial planning offers instruments to resolve potential conflicts with affected stakeholders. On a regional level, the determination of priority and exclusion areas for the use of wind power based on functional criteria represents the most essential planning measure. For the protection of affected residents and nearby housing areas, safety distance regulations are normally applied. Since most distance regulations are defined as fixed distance values, the question arises: if a static approach sufficiently considers the technical state and the further development of wind power systems with increasing plant heights as well as cumulating effects of large wind farms, i.e. cumulated noise effects that rise with the number of spin wheels. To take these factors better into account, the determination of safety distance could be dynamically bound to power plant height and wind farm size. This article introduces a dynamic approach for dimensioning safety distances, which consists of a formula to calculate distances in relation to the height of the wind power plants and the number of spin wheels. The formula takes shading, noise, and icefall into account. It is relevant for wind farm planning, as it does not only allow for determining distances from sensible land uses to wind power plants, but also allows for assessing variants of wind farms in terms of height and number of the spin wheels in a given area.
Highlights
European Union energy and climate protection policies aim at the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of 20% until 2020 [1] and 80%–95% until 2050 [2]
One approach would be to determine the required safety distances by taking the size of a priority area for wind power usage and, the feasible number of wind power plants, the affected housing area with its respective noise limit, and the power class of the wind turbine as well as the operating mode into account [16]. This approach could be evolved by calculating safety distances on the basis of a formula involving the possible number of power plants and the total power plant height
Considering the political agenda on wind power expansion and the environmental effects of its large-scale usage, the spatial regulation of wind power expansion plays a key role for its realization and public acceptance
Summary
European Union energy and climate protection policies aim at the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of 20% until 2020 [1] and 80%–95% until 2050 [2]. Problems arise from noise emissions, shading, ice falling, killing, or displacement of certain sensitive bird and bat species and, change of landscape sceneries These effects grow largely with the size of the wind turbines, which are up to 200 m at the moment, and may lead to resistance against wind power usage in local populations, nature protection, and tourism [10,11]. Mitigating environmental effects of wind energy with spatial planning measures While side effects of the wind power usage as interference of bird and bat species or the change of landscape sceneries cause primarily nature protection-related impacts, effects such as noise and shading emissions have negative impacts on affected housing areas and in further consequence on the quality of living for local residents.
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