Promotion of new wind farms based on a decision support system

Abstract

The integration in electric power networks of new renewable energy facilities is the final result of a complex planning process. One of the important objectives of this process is the selection of suitable geographical locations where such facilities can be built. This selection procedure can be a difficult task because of the initially opposing positions of the different agents involved in this procedure, such as, for example, investors, utilities, governmental agencies or social groups. The conflicting interest of the agents can delay or block the construction of new facilities. This paper presents a new decision support system, based on Geographic Information Systems, designed to overcome the problems posed by the agents and thus achieve a consensual selection of locations and overcome the problems deriving from their preliminary differing preferences. This paper presents the description of the decision support system, as well as the results obtained for two groups of agents useful for the selection of locations for the construction of new wind farms in La Rioja (Spain).

Incorporating holistic methodologies in determining wind resource availability for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes

“…Based on a survey, Ramirez-Rosado et al (2008) computed the weighted-sigmoid graph showing how distance from a wind project is visually perceived. The equation describing visual impact, which ranges from 0 (no impact) to 1 (high impact) is:…”

“…where D ij is the distance from the observer location i to the wind farm location j, r is a parameter with value r = 11.167 + 2.2599n, s is a parameter with value s = 3.98635 + 1.0206n, h is the wind turbine height in meters, and n is the number of wind turbines in the wind farm (Ramirez-Rosado et al 2008). For personal use only.…”

“…This is a simplified version of the weighted aggregation in Ramirez-Rosado et al (2008), where we have excluded community-specific situational observer scores For personal use only.…”

“…Methods for characterizing the environmental impacts of wind development are an emerging area, with a special focus on wildlife (e.g., bird) fatalities (Eichhorn and Drechsler 2010) though an exhaustive review of this literature is beyond the scope of the present paper. Finally, communities often place constraints on wind developments when there is the potential for visual or audible impacts (Ramirez-Rosado et al 2008). This latter element is a critical but often overlooked part of a holistic view of wind development, though community opposition is most likely to make headlines.…”

“…The visual impact of wind farms and the noise they generate are the two most important human impact factors to consider in an earlystage resource assessment. Ramirez-Rosado et al (2008) describe a method to analyze visual impact as a function of distance between the observer and the wind turbine. Perceived visual impact data (as measured by focus group surveys) was parameterized into a model to give the visual impact rating as a function of distance from the wind farm, the turbine heights, and number of turbines (Ramırez-Rosado et al 2008).…”