A student from the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University of Lublin (UMCS) has developed an application indicating optimal sites available for the construction of wind power plants in Poland. Site selection is one of the key decisions in the implementation of wind farm projects. It is made up of many factors – wind conditions, land use, distance from households and the power grid, and even vehicle access.

In order to make it easier for investors to find the right location, Barbara Czausz from the Geoinformatics Student Research Group “GeoIT”, operating at the Faculty of Earth Sciences and Spatial Management of the Lublin University, prepared a draft application “Where to build wind power plants?”. 

The application is demonstrative in nature, and its purpose is to present potential locations available for the construction of wind turbines in Poland, located at distances above 500 m, 700 m and 1000 m from buildings. 

The areas shown also include appropriate distances from existing wind turbines (ten times the height of the wind turbines), protected areas, i.e. national parks, landscape parks, nature reserves, ecological grounds, natural and landscape complexes, special protection areas, protected landscape and special protection areas (1000 m), forests (150 m), rivers and lakes (100 m), and high and extra-high voltage power lines (100 m).

The analysis used in the application was based on reference vector data from the Topographic Database and the Corine Land Cover database. The results of the analysis were presented on an interactive map in the form of a publicly available ArcGIS Online application, allowing anyone to check potential locations for the construction of power plants anywhere in Poland.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński