Wind turbine placement and externalities

We apply Open Street Map to identify available placement cells and Global Wind Atlas to determine average wind speeds on a 500 x 500m grid in Germany (1.3 million cells). Minimum distances to obstacles such a roads and buildings leave 535,000 potential placement cells. We calculate distance-dependent noise and visibility damages for each placement cell by using property prices for each of the 401 German counties. We mini- mize the sum of externalities and project cost given a certain expansion target of aver- age power output, thereby allowing to build two different turbine types. The externality share is 13% for the first 3,600 turbines and 52% with total damages of 293 billion e when installing 83,000 turbines (349 GW rated power). The externality share grows up to 311% with total damages of 1,409 billion e when not considering externalities in the placement process.