Modelling potential visibility of wind turbines: A geospatial approach for planning and impact mitigation

There has been a dramatic increase in wind power supply due to the growing demand for renewable energy sources across the globe. In this process, technological advancements have led to the emergence of more sophisticated wind turbines with higher hubs and larger swept areas to reduce the unit costs for power generation. However, there is also a growing concern about the visibility impacts of wind turbines. Spatial modelling of the potential visibility of wind turbines holds strategic information for wind power siting decisions. The visibility information is critical to breaking trade-offs between energy production and protecting the visual amenity of landscapes. Currently, public attention to the visual impacts of wind turbines tends to rise in countries with high wind power capacities. Decreases in property values due to wind turbine visibility and negative impacts on scenery are among the factors that draw public attention. These implications make it necessary to use spatial analysis and develop mitigation strategies based on the geospatial outputs. This paper aims to produce Potential Visibility Models (PVM) to analyse wind turbine visibility from candidate observation locations where the scenery is an important asset. These are residential buildings (RB), protected areas (PA), natural and archaeological sites (NAS), tourism development centres (TDC), roads (RD), and the coastal areas (CS). The results showed that potential turbine visibility varied across the study area considering the five qualitative visibility classes. The areas with "very low" and "low" potential visibility were proposed as candidate areas of low visual impact for wind power generation.