With growing interest in green energy and government subsidies designed to support renewable energy sources, it’s no surprise to see the growing number of new wind energy projects. In fact, according to statistics from the American Wind Energy Association, utility-grade wind energy projects can currently be found in 39 states plus Puerto Rico, while over one-quarter of the total wind energy generating capacity in the US today has come online within the past five years.
The high number of new wind energy projects in recent years has led many to start looking for better ways to conduct wind farm surveying. Getting a high-quality land survey done quickly is one of the prerequisites for getting great results from your wind energy project and working with a land surveying partner that has specific experience working on wind projects is one of the best ways to make sure you get the land surveying services you need. Read on to learn more about how a surveyor can assist you with wind farm development.
Wind Farm Surveying Helps With Turbine Placement
The fact is that you just can’t put up wind turbines anywhere and expect to turn out usable amounts of energy. The precise location of your wind turbines is a very important determinant in how successful they will be at producing energy, and working with a land surveying partner can help you make sure the turbines end up getting placed where they need to be.
With 3D models of the terrain where the wind farm is to be constructed, your land surveying partner can help you conduct airflow analysis to determine where hills, trees or other obstacles might block the proper flow of wind. These same models will also help you determine which areas are best suited to producing the most energy from wind turbines, and how far apart the turbines should be positioned from one another.
Wind Farm Surveys Can Be Created Faster Than Ever
Like any major development project that covers a large area, wind energy projects often suffer when developers aren’t able to gather the information they need about an area in a timely manner. This can lead to serious delays in the project itself and push back the time when developers start seeing a return on their investment in the project.
Luckily, if you choose to work with a land surveying partner that uses the latest in surveying technologies, there’s no reason this still has to be the case. For example, if you work with a land surveying partner that uses unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), your surveying team may be able to cover up to 400 acres of land in an hour, with the results of the survey turned around and ready to use within 24 hours. Even for very large projects like wind farms, today’s land surveyors have the technology needed to keep the process moving quickly.
Wind Farm Surveying Extends to Transmission Line Routing
Finally, another important aspect of wind farm surveying is getting the energy produced by wind turbines to the cities where people actually need it. This can be a major problem, because most wind farms are built far outside of major metropolitan areas. If there isn’t a cost-effective, efficient plan in place for getting the energy where it needs to be, the high costs might end up offsetting all the good that a developer has done with the wind farm in the first place.
Building many miles of power lines to transmit power from your wind farm to cities is likely unavoidable, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take a smart approach to doing so. A land surveying partner can show you how to get by with building the least amount of line possible, while also avoiding potential terrain hazards in the path of the line.
To learn more about wind farm surveying services, read the new Landpoint ebook.
