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

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 brightness 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 α 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.