Wind Farms - Combining Energy And Ecological Performance In Crimea

Renewable energy use is spreading worldwide presenting the future of the power engineering - its renewable resources and low ecological impact characterize one of the best technologies to support permanently growing energy consumption and contribute to sustainable development. But its development is sometimes hampered by lack of suitable technologies and strong positions of the competing conventional energy production. Moreover, critics emphasize such problems of renewable energy use as unstable energy production, complicated connection to power lines, some ecological problems. To prove its efficiency renewable energy development needs support by relevant resource and ecological assessments. This paper presents our research concerning wind farm location issue regarding both production efficiency and minimal ecological impact. Our field research in Crimea was directed at on-site assessment of wind farm location efficiency as well as studies of public opinion concerning local wind farms and wind energy use in general. It was found out that Crimean wind farms have controversial location efficiency related to its power production. But their ecological impact was minimal proved by both on-site measurements and sociological survey results. It was also found that wind turbine noise impact had a very complicated character, but had no significant ecological impact.