Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Wind farm camoflage

This century is supposed to be a century for renewable energy if we are to listen to the optimistic environmentalists among us, where we reject the scourge of the carbon fuels and look towards a future, harnessing natural forces, instead of natural resources. One of these such forces is the wind. Simply an old idea of windmills rehashed to make electricity, from the possibilities of more efficient technology.
These wind farms recive a lot of local opposition from locals a lot of this groundless nonsense, like claiming that low frequencies of the turbines might cause a health hazard. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1463589,00.html is a typical example of this. Note especially the statement, "It introduces an angular, lined and discordant visual impact into a landscape which is valued precisely because it is one of the few pieces left in the country where such development is noticeably absent" The Yorkshire Dales, particularly known for its dry stone walling (see this link http://www.keswick.u-net.com/ldwwf.htm to see it for yourself), a historically, angular, lined and discordant visual object much valued by those appreciating the heritage of the dales.
Unfortunately a legitimate downside of this new power generation is the size of the wind farms, both the prominance of them in terms of height, and in terms of number of turbines involved (cooling towers being roughly as tall as turbines, but not as numerous), which brings a lot of criticism from local groups or NIMBYs (not in my back yard, incidentally since when did a British person have a back yard? NIMAs (not in my area) never made it as Britain adopted yet another Americanism, back yard that is, not NIMBY as that definitely was British, in the 19th Century).
A partial solution to the problem has been to put them out at sea, but still these farms have come in for some criticism. An option for power companies is to colour the wind farms so that they blend in with the sky. Not the land, as some American states seem to think, A very difficult task if one is to take in the factors:
  • Distance from the winfarm.
  • Position of the windfarm in relation to the sun, and the time of day.
  • The weather conditions around at the time.
  • What people are doing at the time of seeing the wind farm.
  • The attitude of the population when looking at the windfarm.

From these factors it is possible to take in the averages of the factors to provide a solution that is best for the greater amount of people.

  1. Firstly it will be neccessary to identify the maximum visual range from which you can see the wind farm, taking into account, geography, such as hills and the like.
  2. Then, work out the distance from which the most mumber of people will regularly pay attention to the wind farm, not just glance at it, (e.g. not just those travelling through an area/ although those holidaying in an area would be taken into consideration, especially if it were in a place reknowned for its scenery). And the angles at which the farm will be visible, allowing the surveyor to quanify a sector analysis of the surrounding area. An idea would be to focus on population centres, and bias it towards groups most complaining about the scheme.
  3. This gives an average distance and some dominant angles from which to work out where the wind turbines are most viewed from.
  4. Then it will be worked out, from questionnaires in that catchment area, when people are mostly going to notice the wind farm. Probably, on weekends, when it is a nice day, a holiday, they are looking at the scenery, something which forces their attitude to the environment to change. Perhaps the proposal of another wind farm.
  5. This information could then be used to form an average of when the wind farm is to be a most conspicuous object against the sky and therefore most visible. Obviously every placement will be different and lighting conditions, angles of the sun, visibility at those popular times are all changeable.
  6. By photographing the sky, from those different places, determined by distance, angle and time, it is possible to work out the average colouration of the wind farm to make it less conspicuous on the land scape. By taking in the sky in each photo, looking at the most likely sky colours and patterns the turbines will be viewed most often against, it is possible to camoflage the turbines accordingly. In a variety of shades and patterns to break up their linear form in the sky.
  7. Obviously the base stations and power distribution transformers should be kept either subterrainian or disguised by trees, an afterthought but quite a simple one really.

Hopefully this will help the cause of more environmentally beneficial energy sources, allowing their greater acceptance in countries unreceptive to their visual impact just yet.

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