via-wind: A Visual Impact Assessment Tool for Wind Turbines

via-wind is an open-source tool for conducting visual impact assessments for wind turbines.

It combines geographic information system (GIS) and 3D simulation methods to account for the key factors driving the visual impact of installed wind turbines, including distance, viewing angle, turbine orientation, visual exposure, and the cumulative effects of multiple turbines.

This software is optimized for use in high-performance computing environments to enable large scale (e.g., country-wide) analysis, but can also be run on a single server or personal computer.

Installation

1. Clone the repository

   git clone git@github.nrel.gov:GDS/via-wind.git
   

2. Move into the local repo

   cd via-wind

3. Recommended: Setup virtual environment with conda/mamba:

   mamba env create -f environment.yml
   mamba activate via-wind
   

   Note: You may choose an alternative virtual environment solution; however, installation of dependencies is not guaranteed to work.

4. Install via_wind package:

   • For users: pip install .
   • For developers: pip install -e '.[dev]'

5. Developers Only Install pre-commit

   pre-commit install
   

Usage

Refer to the Usage documentation.

Developers

Some unit tests may fail due to checks of content of output files, which may differ slightly across operating systems. To skip these issues, you can run pytest --skip_content_check.

Additional Information

NREL Software Record number SWR-24-87.