Quantifying the visual impact of wind farm lights on the nocturnal landscape

TL;DR

This paper introduces a model to quantify the visual impact of wind farm lights on the night sky, showing they can be visible from several kilometers away and significantly affect nocturnal landscapes.

Contribution

A simple model is proposed to assess the brightness and visibility range of wind turbine lights, incorporating atmospheric and visual variables, aiding environmental impact evaluations.

Findings

Medium-intensity turbine lights can be brighter than Venus up to 4 km away.

Turbine lights can outshine the brightest star until about 10 km.

Lights can be visible up to 38 km, affecting nocturnal landscape perception.

Abstract

Wind farm lights are a conspicuous feature in the nocturnal landscape. Their presence is a source of light pollution for residents and the environment, severely disrupting in some places the aesthetic, cultural, and scientific values of the pristine starry skies. In this work we present a simple model for quantifying the visual impact of individual wind turbine lights, based on the comparison of their brightnesses with the brightness of well-known night sky objects. The model includes atmospheric and visual variables, and for typical parameters it shows that medium-intensity turbine lights can be brighter than Venus up to ~4 km from the turbine, brighter than alpha CMa (the brightest star on the nighttime sky) until about ~10 km, and reach the standard stellar visibility limit for the unaided eye (m_v=+6.00) at ~38 km. These results suggest that the visual range of wind farms at nighttime may be significantly larger than at daytime, a factor that should be taken into account in environmental impact assessments.