scholarly journals Using participatory GIS to examine social perception towards proposed wind energy landscapes

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Lombard
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Land Use ◽  
Wind Energy ◽  
Wind Turbines ◽  
Wind Farm ◽  
Social Acceptance ◽  
Wind Farms ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Participatory Gis ◽  
The Impact

Thirteen onshore wind farm projects, totalling approximately 700 wind turbines, are proposed for the West Coast Region (WCR) of the Western Cape Province in South Africa. Wind energy exploitation possesses the ability to transform what can be classified as natural landscapes into landscapes of power, making the type of landscape on which wind turbines are deployed a prominent factor in its social acceptance or rejection. This paper examines the landscape aesthetics and land use interference of proposed wind farms in the WCR of South Africa through determining if social acceptance or rejection of proposed wind farms is dependent on the residents and visitors scenic and land use valuation of the natural landscape. The results indicate that the visual intrusion of wind turbines is the impact that respondents are least concerned with contrasting with the findings of international literature and further reasons for this anomaly are interrogated against the background of South Africa’s dire electricity needs. The paper concludes that visual impact assessments alone are not sufficient for evaluating landscapes and this paper recommends that participatory geographic information systems (PGIS) be used in addition to existing wind energy landscape assessments.

scholarly journals Wealth of Wind and Visitors: Tourist Industry Attitudes towards Wind Energy Development in Iceland

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 693
Author(s):  
Anna Dóra Sæþórsdóttir ◽  
Margrét Wendt ◽  
Edita Tverijonaite
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Wind Energy ◽  
Wind Turbines ◽  
Wind Farm ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Wind Farms ◽  
Energy Development ◽  
Tourism Industry ◽  
Land Use Conflicts ◽  
Wind Energy Development

The interest in harnessing wind energy keeps increasing globally. Iceland is considering building its first wind farms, but its landscape and nature are not only a resource for renewable energy production; they are also the main attraction for tourists. As wind turbines affect how the landscape is perceived and experienced, it is foreseeable that the construction of wind farms in Iceland will create land use conflicts between the energy sector and the tourism industry. This study sheds light on the impacts of wind farms on nature-based tourism as perceived by the tourism industry. Based on 47 semi-structured interviews with tourism service providers, it revealed that the impacts were perceived as mostly negative, since wind farms decrease the quality of the natural landscape. Furthermore, the study identified that the tourism industry considered the following as key factors for selecting suitable wind farm sites: the visibility of wind turbines, the number of tourists and tourist attractions in the area, the area’s degree of naturalness and the local need for energy. The research highlights the importance of analysing the various stakeholders’ opinions with the aim of mitigating land use conflicts and socioeconomic issues related to wind energy development.

scholarly journals Managing Wind Power Generation via Indexed Semi-Markov Model and Copula

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (16) ◽  
pp. 4246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guglielmo D’Amico ◽  
Giovanni Masala ◽  
Filippo Petroni ◽  
Robert Adam Sobolewski
Keyword(s):  
Power Generation ◽  
Power Systems ◽  
Wind Energy ◽  
Output Power ◽  
Wind Turbines ◽  
Wind Farm ◽  
Energy Systems ◽  
Wind Farms ◽  
Energy System ◽  
Spatial Dependencies

Because of the stochastic nature of wind turbines, the output power management of wind power generation (WPG) is a fundamental challenge for the integration of wind energy systems into either power systems or microgrids (i.e., isolated systems consisting of local wind energy systems only) in operation and planning studies. In general, a wind energy system can refer to both one wind farm consisting of a number of wind turbines and a given number of wind farms sited at the area in question. In power systems (microgrid) planning, a WPG should be quantified for the determination of the expected power flows and the analysis of the adequacy of power generation. Concerning this operation, the WPG should be incorporated into an optimal operation decision process, as well as unit commitment and economic dispatch studies. In both cases, the probabilistic investigation of WPG leads to a multivariate uncertainty analysis problem involving correlated random variables (the output power of either wind turbines that constitute wind farm or wind farms sited at the area in question) that follow different distributions. This paper advances a multivariate model of WPG for a wind farm that relies on indexed semi-Markov chains (ISMC) to represent the output power of each wind energy system in question and a copula function to reproduce the spatial dependencies of the energy systems’ output power. The ISMC model can reproduce long-term memory effects in the temporal dependence of turbine power and thus understand, as distinct cases, the plethora of Markovian models. Using copula theory, we incorporate non-linear spatial dependencies into the model that go beyond linear correlations. Some copula functions that are frequently used in applications are taken into consideration in the paper; i.e., Gumbel copula, Gaussian copula, and the t-Student copula with different degrees of freedom. As a case study, we analyze a real dataset of the output powers of six wind turbines that constitute a wind farm situated in Poland. This dataset is compared with the synthetic data generated by the model thorough the calculation of three adequacy indices commonly used at the first hierarchical level of power system reliability studies; i.e., loss of load probability (LOLP), loss of load hours (LOLH) and loss of load expectation (LOLE). The results will be compared with those obtained using other models that are well known in the econometric field; i.e., vector autoregressive models (VAR).

TROUBLES WITH A WIND FARM PROECT

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Keenan Nakagawa ◽  
Amarjit Singh
Keyword(s):  
Renewable Energy ◽  
Wind Energy ◽  
Wind Farm ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Wind Farms ◽  
Adverse Health Effects ◽  
New Development ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Native Birds ◽  
The Impact

The Kahuku Wind Farm of Hawaii has been laden with controversy since its inception in 2011. Although it was one of the two wind farms on Oahu responsible for supplying a combined 14% of the island’s renewable energy in 2018, citizens have been outspoken in their criticism of the facility. Local residents have cited concerns regarding adverse health effects to the surrounding community, as well as deaths of native birds and endangered bats caused by the turbines. The impact on the Hawaiian hoary bat population has been a focal point of numerous complaints, as more bats are being killed than initially predicted. To the dismay of their opponents, eight additional turbines are being erected in Kahuku as part of the Na Pua Makani Wind Energy Project. And, as of November 2019, approximately 200 individuals have been arrested while protesting it. To add to the controversy, wind farm officials are currently facing legal hurdles, as challengers are skeptical on whether the project’s environmental review correctly estimates the number of birds and bats that will fall victim to this new development. The purpose of this study is to analyze and evaluate the issues associated with the Kahuku Wind Farm and Na Pua Makani Wind Energy Project, as well as the position and arguments of stakeholders and litigants.

scholarly journals Aligned and Staggered Layouts: What is the Impact on Wind Farms Land-Use?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Valotta Rodrigues ◽  
Corinne Lengsfeld
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Output Power ◽  
Wind Farm ◽  
Wind Farms ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Continuous Increase ◽  
Onshore Wind ◽  
Wake Interaction ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Blade Element

The use of wind energy has been developing fast over the last years. The global cumulative wind power capacity increased by 10.5% in 2019, most of which comes from onshore wind farms. One of the consequences of this continuous increase is the use of land for onshore wind farms. There are already cases worldwide where lack of well-established plans and strategies have caused delays in projects. The need for efficiently using land for wind farms will be mandatory in the short term. In this work, we present a numerical analysis to evaluate wind farm land-use. By defining the ratio between mechanical output power over an area as a parameter called land-use ratio, this work focused on comparing several cases of aligned and staggered layouts. Mechanical output power was estimated using a validated code based on Blade Element Momentum code, and the wake velocities and wake interaction effects were estimated using a validated wind turbine CFD model. In terms of output power, staggered designs are more efficient than aligned designs. However, the results showed that even though staggered designs produced higher output power, aligned farms with tight lateral spacing could be as efficient as staggered ones in terms of land-use but using fewer turbines. In summary, tightly aligned designs should be a tendency in the future towards efficient use of land in wind farms.

scholarly journals ‘Knowledge is power’ – making sense of wind farm data

2014 ◽  
pp. 123-127
Author(s):  
Frank O’Connor
Keyword(s):  
Renewable Energy ◽  
Wind Energy ◽  
New Hampshire ◽  
Wind Turbines ◽  
Wind Farm ◽  
Wind Farms ◽  
Energy Sector ◽  
Electricity Demand ◽  
Making Sense

The Irish wind energy sector is booming. In 2012, Irish wind farms supplied enough energy to provide about 15% of Ireland’s electricity demand and power 1.12 million households. In March 2014, The Irish Wind Energy Association (IWEA), an organisation committed to the promotion of wind energy in Ireland, highlighted a planned €7 billion investment in the sector, with a confirmed project pipeline of over 180 new wind schemes. According to a recent TCD/ESRI report, this will bring the total number of jobs in the sector from 3,400 at present to over 8,400 and see a doubling of production of clean, indigenous, renewable energy. The modern wind turbines, which will be rolled out as part of these new schemes are a far cry from the turbines installed over four decades ago at the first commercial wind farm, constructed in 1980 on Crotched Mountain, New Hampshire, USA. A modern turbine such as ...

Flow Simulation Around a Rim-Driven Wind Turbine and in Its Wake

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan E. Kaiser ◽  
Svetlana V. Poroseva ◽  
Michael A. Snider ◽  
Rob O. Hovsapian ◽  
Erick Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Wind Turbine ◽  
Wind Turbines ◽  
Wind Farm ◽  
Flow Simulation ◽  
Wind Farms ◽  
Sensitivity Study ◽  
Onshore Wind ◽  
Flow Simulations ◽  
Turbine Design ◽  
The Impact

A relatively high free stream wind velocity is required for conventional horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWTs) to generate power. This requirement significantly limits the area of land for viable onshore wind farm locations. To expand a potential for wind power generation and an area suitable for onshore wind farms, new wind turbine designs capable of wind energy harvesting at low wind speeds are currently in development. The aerodynamic characteristics of such wind turbines are notably different from industrial standards. The optimal wind farm layout for such turbines is also unknown. Accurate and reliable simulations of a flow around and behind a new wind turbine design should be conducted prior constructing a wind farm to determine optimal spacing of turbines on the farm. However, computations are expensive even for a flow around a single turbine. The goal of the current study is to determine a set of simulation parameters that allows one to conduct accurate and reliable simulations at a reasonable cost of computations. For this purpose, a sensitivity study on how the parameters variation influences the results of simulations is conducted. Specifically, the impact of a grid refinement, grid stretching, grid cell shape, and a choice of a turbulent model on the results of simulation of a flow around a mid-sized Rim Driven Wind Turbine (U.S. Patent 7399162) and in its near wake is analyzed. This wind turbine design was developed by Keuka Energy LLC. Since industry relies on commercial software for conducting flow simulations, STAR-CCM+ software [1] was used in our study. A choice of a turbulence model was made based on the results from our previous sensitivity study of flow simulations over a rotating disk [2].

THE DEVELOPMENT OF WIND FARMS

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Clifford Savage ◽  
John Smallwood
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Wind Energy ◽  
South African ◽  
Wind Farm ◽  
Renewable Energy Sources ◽  
Wind Farms ◽  
Eastern Cape ◽  
Financial Return ◽  
African Government ◽  
Descriptive Survey

The Eastern Cape in South Africa has been identified as having ideal characteristics for the development of wind farming, and thus the industry has grown in this area. Wind energy has been identified as a tool to create jobs; as the demand for electricity increases and renewable energy sources become a necessity, the South African Government has provided targets and incentives to attract investors into the industry. This study investigates why wind farms attract public resistance. It also investigates if wind energy is expensive compared to other sources of energy in South Africa and the Eastern Cape. A descriptive survey was conducted with two associations related to the study. Essential findings include: The largest impact that wind farm developments have on the environment is their visual pollution. Wind-generated energy provides the best return on investment and the second-best capital cost per megawatt in comparison with other sources of energy. In the Eastern Cape, wind as a resource is consistent enough to realise a financial return, and could be used to a large extent in terms of provision of power to the national grid.

Assessment of wind power capacity credit in Morocco: Outlook to 2020

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-207
Author(s):  
Yassir El Karkri ◽  
Aboubakr El Makrini ◽  
Hassane El Markhi ◽  
Tijani Lamhamdi ◽  
Hassan El Moussaoui
Keyword(s):  
Wind Energy ◽  
Wind Farm ◽  
Electric Energy ◽  
Wind Farms ◽  
Electricity Production ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Energy Integration ◽  
Production Network ◽  
Two Phases ◽  
The Impact

The present article focuses on the calculation of the wind capacity credit by integrating the Moroccan project on the wind energy of 1000 MW in 2020. After an introduction to the Moroccan Integrated Wind Energy Project, a wind capacity credit assessment program will be implemented on Matlab software including the whole information about “installed capacity, number of plants, failure rate, types of installed units, peak demand etc.” This program will be used to calculate the safety rate of an electrical system as well as the capacity credit of Morocco’s electricity production network. This section will be built in two phases: the first phase will examine the impact of TAZA wind farm with an installed power of 150 MW, while the second phase will focus on the generalization of this study on all the wind farms that will be injected to the Moroccan grid in 2020. The research provides conclusion according to comments and assessment of the impact of this electric energy integration based on the wind generation.

scholarly journals The Impact of Wind Farms on the Prices of Nearby Houses in Poland: A Review and Synthesis

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-24
Author(s):  
Marcin Torzewski
Keyword(s):  
Wind Energy ◽  
Wind Farm ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Wind Farms ◽  
Analysis Methodology ◽  
Property Prices ◽  
Residential Properties ◽  
Dynamic Growth ◽  
Polish Economy ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Since 2009/10 Poland has experienced a dynamic growth of wind energy production. Currently, wind energy is the most popular resource of renewable energy in Poland. Despite the importance of wind energy for the Polish economy, there is no reliable and comprehensive research on the causal effects of wind farm facilities on property prices. The aim of this article is to critically review existing research related to the impact of wind farms on prices of nearby residential properties. The article concentrates on Polish as well as international scientific literature. Besides presenting the main findings obtained from the review of literature, the article clusters these findings based on information that is crucial to the analysis: methodology, data, and subject of study. The literature review is followed by a description of the characteristics of wind energy in Poland, which includes differences in the location of wind farms between Poland and other countries. The article concludes that despite the fact that some international research points to a significant causal effect of wind farms on property prices, these results cannot be easily transposed to Polish circumstances. Based on the reviewed literature, the article moreover shows directions for improving future analyses in Poland, particularly with respect to the methodology.

scholarly journals An Analysis of Wind Power Generation on the Electric Transmission System of Southern Vietnam

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 204-212
Author(s):  
Minh-Hoa Nguyen ◽  
Van-Tan Tran ◽  
Tan-Hung Pham ◽  
Thanh-Luu Cao
Keyword(s):  
Power Generation ◽  
Power Systems ◽  
Power System ◽  
Wind Energy ◽  
Wind Turbines ◽  
Wind Farm ◽  
Wind Farms ◽  
Wind Speeds ◽  
Southern Vietnam ◽  
Three Phase

Renewable energy is an emerging candidate in power generation for the compensation of the exhausted fossil fuel, in which wind energy plays an important role. However, how wind farms impact existing power systems has still been a subject on which many researchers are studying. This study has analyzed and evaluated the four wind farms consisting of Ca-Mau (300 MW), Bac-Lieu (99 MW), Soc-Trang (100 MW) and Tra-Vinh (33 MW) located in Southern Vietnam via using the commercial package, WAsP software. Ca-Mau wind farm has the highest planned rated capacity with 51.7% among the wind farms. Each wind farm is built from three different types of wind turbines (1 MW, 2 MW and 3 MW). The estimation has shown that all of the wind farms could produce 2,265 GWh annually, and the 3-MW wind turbines are the most efficient and give the smallest losses for producing wind energy. The wind farms, with respect to environmentally friendly aspects, could avoid 978,544 tCO2 emitted to the environment annually. Additionally, the ETAP program has also been applied to simulate the effects of the proposed wind farms on the national power system including the disturbances from wind speeds, three-phase bus faults, tripping off wind farms and three-phase line faults on the power system. The results show that the wind farms are only slightly impacted.

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