In the shadow of wind energy: Predicting community exposure and annoyance to wind turbine shadow flicker in the United States

Publication Type

Journal Article

Date Published

05/2022

Authors

DOI

Abstract

The moving shadows caused by wind turbines, referred to as “shadow flicker” (“SF”), are known to generate annoyance in a subset of the exposed population. However, the relationship between the level of modeled SF exposure and the population's perceived SF and SF annoyance is poorly understood. Improved understanding of SF exposure impacts could provide a basis for exposure thresholds and, in turn, potentially improve community acceptance of and experience with wind power projects.

This study modeled SF exposure at nearly 35,000 residences across 61 wind projects in the United States, 747 of which were also survey respondents. Using these results, we analyzed the factors that led to perceived SF and self-reported SF annoyance. We found that perceived SF is primarily an objective response to SF exposure, distance to the closest turbine, and whether the respondent moved in after the wind project was built. Conversely, SF annoyance was not significantly correlated with SF exposure. Rather, SF annoyance is primarily a subjective response to wind turbine aesthetics, annoyance to other anthropogenic sounds, level of education, and age of the respondent.

We also examined regulations governing SF in the sample project areas and compared them to SF exposure in the surrounding population. Additionally, we found that noise limits could serve as a proxy for SF exposure, as 90% of those exposed to wind turbine sound of no more than 45 dBA L1h had SF exposure of less than 8 h per year (a prototypical EU regulatory threshold).

Journal

Energy Research & Social Science

Volume

87

Year of Publication

2022

URL

Notes

An open-access version of this article published in Energy Research & Social Science can be downloaded here. The corresponding author is Ben Hoen

A webinar with the authors, covering the results of the study was recorded on Mar 11, 2022, and can be viewed here

Organization

Research Areas

Related Files