Renewable energy in the United Kingdom

energy 'farm'

A wind farm is not a polygon, it is a relation. Other activities can and do happen on the grass between the turbines (e.g. sheep grazing), so the 'farm' is actually a collection of turbines, access tracks, and substation.

A wind farm is most definitely not landuse=industrial as there is still farmland between the turbines. I'm also strongly against mapping the turbine 'pad' areas as landuse=industrial.

A 'resubmission' is when a planning application is resubmitted. A 'repowering' is when a site has had old turbines replaced with new, more modern, ones. An 'extension' is where extra turbines are added on to an existing scheme.

Please merge phases/extensions into single sites where it is obvious that it is owned and run as the same operation, e.g. "Xyz" and "Xyz Extension". Sites being adjacent does *not* mean they get merged automatically because there are often groups of separate wind farm operations at a location.

Overpass Turbo

   [out:json][timeout:25];
   (
       relation["site"="wind_farm"]({ { bbox } });
   );
   out body;
   >;
   out skel qt;

wind turbine

The ID editor does most of these by default.

Add a turbine to the wind farm relation role=generator

Note: when adding things to a relation using the ID Editor the wind farm will only appear in the dropdown if another object already in the relation is visible in the edit screen. Sometimes, turbines are quite far apart. It can help to include the access tracks as you go.

access tracks

Wind farms must have access tracks to get to the turbines. Often they are clearly for this purpose only, other times they may be existing paths.

Q: does it hurt for an existing footpath to be included in wind farm relation? The path may need to have a section broken so as to not include lots of other sections that aren't relevant.

Optionally add the tracks to the wind farm relation as role='access'

To now, I have only connected obvious access tracks

pads

Very occasionally mappers have plotted the concrete 'pad' that the turbine sits on, sometimes as landuse=industrial. I recommend against this - Jnicho02 (talk) 12:16, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

substation

Every wind farm has a substation where the turbines are connected to the main power cable. This will be a small building close to the first turbine, but not always identifiable.

Add it to the wind farm relation role='substation'

meteorologic mast

A wind farm often has meteorological masts instrumented with anemometers and wind vanes installed, for both pre-construction assessement of wind resource (temporary structures of 1-3 yrs) and performance monitoring during wind farm operation (fixed structures usually for the operational wind farm lifetime). Typically modern wind turbines will have pairs of individual anemometers and wind vanes mounted on the nacelle used for control, therefore these met masts are not essential for wind farm operation. Typically masts aren't installed unless the wind farm is considering a power curve performance test to validate the turbines are performing to manufacturer specification.

I have mapped these as a 'tower' but I could be wrong.

Scottish Open Data

You could compare to data from https://www.spatialhub.scot/ in iD by adding a custom background of https://geo-apps.spatialhub.scot/geoserver/national_datasets_one_attribute/ows?authkey=05da4c39-517d-4e04-a6f3-90a6ab5d1c82&FORMAT=image/png&TRANSPARENT=TRUE&VERSION=1.3.0&SERVICE=WMS&REQUEST=GetMap&LAYERS=pub_respol,pub_respnt&STYLES=&CRS={proj}&WIDTH={width}&HEIGHT={height}&BBOX={bbox} or in JOSM. The points only display between a range of zoom levels.

List of under construction and operational UK Onshore Wind Farms