Wind turbine farms with blinking lights

ArrowFlyer86

ArrowFlyer86

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The Little Arrow That Could
A Wall Street Journal article on this discusses measures that are being considered in some places to get rid of the blinking red lights on top of wind farms. Might be paywalled, but you can probably google the article and open it (WSJ: "Lawmakers Crack Down on Wind Turbine Lights That Flash All Night").

Apparently people who live in the vicinity of wind farms are annoyed by the incessant blinking red lights on top of all of them, and I can't say I blame them. That would drive me crazy if it polluted my view of the night sky. Especially if it was installed after I had bought my house so I didn't know what I was signing up for.

It sounds like there is some consideration of removing the lights or making them activated by radar or some other means so they'll only come on if an aircraft is nearby and flying low. From my POV, I don't really mind if they were to switch those obstacle lights to be activated by that. And I think that's a decent compromise so that you don't pollute everyone's view. Additionally, it's already on the VFR map to let you know those obstacles exist and what their heights are (below are the ones by me). Putting a blinking red light on every one of them seems kind of overkill to me and I can see scaling that down.

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Curious what peoples thoughts are on this? Do you think having every turbine lit at night-time 24/7 is important?
 
People were upset by all the trains honking their horns going upstream of the Columbia River out of Vancouver. So they decided to stop honking. Within a week, Chuck Kellog was killed crossing an intersection. Shortly thereafter, the trains went back to honking!
 
I think all the tips should have lights that are steady. That way it makes it easier to fly low amongst them at night. More importantly, the tips are higher than the vertical structure AND there’s 2 more of them exposed higher 100% of the time. More lights, not less, lol!!
 
kgruber said:
People were upset by all the trains honking their horns going upstream of the Columbia River out of Vancouver. So they decided to stop honking. Within a week, Chuck Kellog was killed crossing an intersection. Shortly thereafter, the trains went back to honking!
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That's completely different. The honking doesn't continue all night regardless of whether there is a train or not.
 
Imagine putting spinner lights on the tips of windmills. Essentially wind farm light bling!

Add some Neon lights on the bottom to complete the look.
 
Motorists have a reason to gripe, not just residents. When I drive I80 through western Iowa, where MidAmerican Energy has a gazillion turbines, at night there's an immense spectacle of flashing red lights that seemingly fill the horizon. It's distracting, when I'm trying to concentrate on the dark road and the comparatively dim tail lights of the traffic.

If the lights were on steadily, instead of 30 blinks per minute, that would be an improvement.
 
NoHeat said:
Motorists have a reason to gripe, not just residents. When I drive I80 through western Iowa, where MidAmerican Energy has a gazillion turbines, at night there's an immense spectacle of flashing red lights that seemingly fill the horizon. It's distracting, when I'm trying to concentrate on the dark road and the dimly lit traffic.

If the lights were on steadily, instead of 30 blinks per minute, that would be an improvement.
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Same when you're driving I-65 through Indiana. By Rensselaer IIRC. There's massive wind farms that seem to stretch on forever.
 
Put little adsb out devices on each one. Or tie the lights into the pilot controlled lighting at RPJ.
 
I live in SE MN with a pretty large wind farm just west of me. I personally hate the synchronized red blinking lights. I was contacted by the power company at one point to ask how I felt about them switching to a transponder activated light, that would only illuminate when an aircraft was near, and I responded that I liked the idea, but as far as I knew nothing ever came of it. As the owner of a private airstrip within about 2 miles of the windmills, I've gotten pretty used to flying around them, but I can't get used ti those stupid lights!
 
Just wait until wind farms blanket millions of acres across the United States to power the electric vehicles that we are assured will pave the way to the saving of mankind.

That'll make driving and night VFR much more interesting. Oh, and better gaze at the stars while you still can. Then you can tell the next generation what a constellation is, and how back in the day one could see them in the night sky.
 
I came across the SW on I 40, and was fascinated by the huge number of lights on the wind farms.

Similarly, in Germany and the Slav Republic.

Those lights would annoy me if I lived nearby in an otherwise rural region. Proposing to turn off the lights because they are depicted on the air charts is not a valid idea. By that reasoning, no TV, microwave, or other tall tower need be lighted. In my area, Washington DC, people have requested that the lights on most of the towers here be turned off, without regard to even nearby airports.

Unfortunately, many pilots beside myself have lost exact location knowledge flying under an overcast, but legal conditions, for many miles at a time. If I drop 300 feet below the sector min on the sectional, should I be at risk of colliding with an unlighted obstruction?

If I lived in such an areas, I believe that I would close my blinds as I do in my urban area. That solves my light pollution problem until sunrise.

As an aside, I lived for years a tenth of a mile from the B&O main line, with several trains per hour. Every one whistled for the two crossings nearby. I became used to it, and never noticed them after the first months. My wife grew up a mile from another main line, the California Zephyr passed west bound once a day, eastbound once a day, and many other freight or passenger trains as well. 4 rail crossings to whistle for, so 50 or 60 whistles each 24 hours.

These are things people get used to, just as they get used to having electricity, 24/7/365, which is coming to depend on those wind farms to produce.

Another viewpoint, a Mooney collided with an 230,000 volt power line, rather famously BELOW the altitude of the runway he was approaching at KGAI. Some of the residents have called for lights on those towers to prevent another such crash. Doubtless, if lights were installed, others would call for their removal.
 
It also has to do with LED technology and the gross overuse of it. An example are police and emergency vehicles with these insanely bright, and I mean blindingly bright flashing lights. You know, I could see the old ones just fine, they didn't have to amp them up a thousand percent to get my attention.
 
JOhnH said:
That's completely different. The honking doesn't continue all night regardless of whether there is a train or not.
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I don't think you have ANY idea of the amount of train traffic that travels through the Columbia Gorge. It is almost continuous............since it is the only sea-level route through the Cascades.
 
ArrowFlyer86 said:
…Curious what peoples thoughts are on this? Do you think having every turbine lit at night-time 24/7 is important?
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I doubt very many people are up all night long looking at the night sky. Honestly we’re talking a couple of hours a day on average that people are really out there looking at the stars. And that’s not even lost nights of the week, much less of the year.

I’ve seen the wind farms in the Texas panhandle lit up at night and they stretch for more miles than I care to think about and can be seen from forever away on a clear, dark night.

Philosophically, there’s several ways to approach this.

1. Shield the bottom 180* of the beacon so the light is only visible from the air. Probably easiest and cheapest; I don’t know much about HEMS, but of all the solutions, that one is likeliest to be most practical.

2. Turn them all off unless they are within 5NM of an airport or underneath an instrument approach. Probably easy, but not as cheap as #1.

3. Force the generators to come up with some type of radar/lidar/sound triggered lights. Seems overly complex and expensive; at least the price will get spread across everyone buying electricity from those generators.

4. Maintain the status quo; remind folks about the law of unintended consequences. As long as the subsidy exists, this problem won’t go away and without the subsidy, wind farms likely aren’t profitable enough in their own. You’re stuck with what you’ve got until the farms are decommissioned, but the problem likely won’t get worse. Electric rates will likely rise though.
 
TCABM said:
Shield the bottom 180* of the beacon so the light is only visible from the air. Probably easiest and cheapest; I don’t know much about HEMS, but of all the solutions, that one is likeliest to be most practical.
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Please, you're dealing with government and regulations here. We can't go with such a simple, cost effective solution. Dream bigger!
 
kgruber said:
I don't think you have ANY idea of the amount of train traffic that travels through the Columbia Gorge. It is almost continuous............since it is the only sea-level route through the Cascades.
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It doesn't matter what the train traffic through the Columbia Gorge is. It is not an apples to apples comparison the the lights on the wind turbines. Or are you saying the air traffic over those wind turbines is as constant as those trains through the gorge?
 
JOhnH said:
It doesn't matter what the train traffic through the Columbia Gorge is. It is not an apples to apples comparison the the lights on the wind turbines.
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Of course it’s not. Wind farm lights don’t have air horns.
 
JOhnH said:
It doesn't matter what the train traffic through the Columbia Gorge is. It is not an apples to apples comparison the the lights on the wind turbines. Or are you saying the air traffic over those wind turbines is as constant as those trains through the gorge?
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I suspect you know little about the Columbia Gorge, rail or air traffic.
 
Light solution is sadly mostly ignored. Like the acres of parking lots lit up all night for no reason. That said, the blinking firefly lights incessantly ruining the night sky are terrible. And they'll have to blink even after the windmill aka turbine is dead.
 
There are plenty of wind farms that haven’t made it to the charts. So the lights are necessary for any low level night VFR traffic. Our state legislature passed a bill a couple of years ago requiring the lights to be off unless radar detected an aircraft in the vicinity, but the DOD shut that plan down because they didn’t like the idea of having a 1,000-acre beacon to inform their enemies when they flew a helicopter to check on or change out crews at missile silos. So the blinking red lights continue, night after night, year after year.
 
kgruber said:
I suspect you know little about the Columbia Gorge, rail or air traffic.
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Ok, I'll give you that. Now explain to me what the Columbia Gorge rail or air traffic has to do with putting flashing lights on every wind turbine regardless of air traffic?
 
Silvaire said:
It also has to do with LED technology and the gross overuse of it. An example are police and emergency vehicles with these insanely bright, and I mean blindingly bright flashing lights. You know, I could see the old ones just fine, they didn't have to amp them up a thousand percent to get my attention.
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No kidding! When we got LED light bars, a few of us pointed out that they are way too bright at night, at least once we’re stopped. Disorienting not just for passersby, but for us on the stop, too. I even showed the sergeant in charge of our vehicles that the fleet services shop could program the lightbars to go to half brightness when the car was in Park. He didn’t care.
 
Our previous house was about 5 miles from one, and yes we lived there before it went up. They are all synchronized, so it's pretty distracting. We moved about 5 miles further away now, so we don't see them over the trees anymore.

I would be VERY much in favor of turning the lights out unless an aircraft is detected. I believe there are some of those systems active in Illinois; I've driven through at least one wind farm that has a spinning radar thingy on a tower. The lights almost pointless anyway. If you had to make an emergency landing, you'd need to know which direction the blades are facing. The one thing they're good for is making it obvious it's a wind farm so you can find the height on the chart.
 
Let's do the same with all the radio towers around......NOT....
 
Blocking the light from below, defeats the purpose of warning a low flying aircraft that happens to be below the lights. e.g. helicopters often fly lower.
There are many technical compromises possible. Such as radar warning based, with an exception based on return tag. DoD could have these tags on their aircraft. You would then likely would want to have IR based strobes for these "blind" aircraft... but this gets more complicated.
The problem is the color, and the much higher level of light emitted by modern strobes. If you really want to solve this problem, the goal would be to minimize the effects that cause the light pollution. Something simple such as only have red lights on the outer edge towers, and white lights on the others. the white lights, would also be on a much slower blinking pattern, e.g. on a randomized interval between 15 and 45 seconds. this would make most of the white lights closer to the natural start light, not perfectly. but closer. This keeps the edge warning lights for approaching aircraft....
Another choice, make the warning lights activated by ADS-B (which DoD does not have). and have static white lights color matched to stars spot lighting from the top of the tower down...

Tim
 
The same farmers who are complaining about wind turbines also complain about electric cars. What’s the connection? Reduction in gasoline consumption = reduced ethanol production = lower corn prices.
 
I know there are all kinds of flyers. I know I won’t be fly down amongst the windmills, with or without lights.

I have a relative that bought a house near a commercial property years ago. She complains about everything to do with it. When I’m there, I notice a little light, hardly any noise. She’ll even blame cell phone connections on the property.

I told her the only solution I see is to move.
 
sourdough44 said:
I know there are all kinds of flyers. I know I won’t be fly down amongst the windmills, with or without lights.
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:yeahthat:
If I need blinking synchronized lights to alert me not to run into a windmill farm then I am already doing something really really wrong and likely have even bigger problems immediately in front of me.

That being said, the lights look really cool at night from a few thousand feet overhead.
 
As a kid I lived a 20510 feet from the Grosse Ile Naval Air Station rotating beacon. It would illuminate the shades of my bedroom all night long. G r e e n white white g r e e n white white....

Almost as traumatic as seeing bugs bunny in drag.
 
I only see one solution, get rid of the wind turbines!
 
PaulS said:
Oh yeah, I forgot about those coal and nuclear plants all over the country side, silly me.
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316 coal plants. 92 nuclear power plants.

The cost per megawatt hour for nuclear is $175 vs $40 for wind. Can we bury the nuclear waste in your back yard?
 
I am astonished that a few of the locals haven’t picked up their .22s and implemented their own solution by now. What’s become of American initiative and independence?
 
Half Fast said:
I am astonished that a few of the locals haven’t picked up their .22s and implemented their own solution by now. What’s become of American initiative and independence?
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That's the way we would have handled it, back in the day!
 
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