What’s being done to reduce the visual impact of wind farms?
Landscape and visual impacts comprise the single most common reason cited for the refusal of planning permission for new wind farms. Wind farms that have fewer but larger turbines may be more visually acceptable than ones that have more but smaller turbines. The trend now in wind power technology is towards building larger more powerful turbines so that proportionately fewer of them will be needed. The height and number of the turbines, the size of the rotor blades, how and where they are arranged, and the presence of associated structures, such as access tracks and transformers – all these factors contribute to the visual impact. Obviously the quality of the surrounding landscape – and its national or regional importance – helps determine the way we perceive wind turbines and assess the level of visual intrusion in any given case.
