Research On Visual Assessment Method Of Wind Farm

The visual impact of wind turbines(WT)is one of the most common problems in wind energy development projects and is one of the major factors affecting public acceptance of wind farms.From a methodological point of view,visual impact assessment(VIA)in China is currently lacking in objective evaluation systems that provide planners and decision makers with science-based solutions to assess visual disturbance to the environment from wind facilities.This paper summarizes the previous VIA method for wind farms,statistics the visual factors related to wind farms,and focuses on the analysis of visual principles of three basic physical factors of visibility,distance,orientation.VIA algorithm was modified to make it suitable for large-scale wind energy facilities,and a systematic wind farm VIA method was constructed based on Arc GIS.The method consists of two models: the first model is a visual sensitivity(VS)calculation model,which is used to evaluate the spatial distribution of visual impact brought by the whole wind power site at the regional scale;The second model is visual magnitude(VM)calculation model,which is used to evaluate the visual impact of each wind turbine on some of the key areas at the local scale.An empirical study of this method was carried out in Yangcheng Lake Wind Farm.In the regional analysis stage,the visual impact spatial distribution of the wind farm on the road,lake and building area was quantified by the VS classification map obtained by the multi-indicator evaluation method;in the local analysis stage,the area of each WT in the key area in the field of vision is quantified based on VM,so as to find the WT causing the visual problem more accurately.And simulate the actual application scenarios of wind farm optimization and upgrading,and build an iterative analysis model to control the visual impact and improve energy efficiency through repeated calculus.The VIA method proposed in this paper can provide decision support for the whole life cycle of wind farms from planning to replacement,and provide a supplement for spatial planning and environmental impact assessment of wind farms.The results show that the visual impact of wind farms can be controlled and managed,and the quantitative analysis of the potential visual impact is helpful to minimize the visual impact brought by WTs and effectively balance the environmental and economic benefits brought by wind farms.