How visible would the proposed Humboldt offshore wind farm be from the coast?

Any offshore wind turbines built in the Humboldt Wind Energy Area (WEA) (1) would be more than 20 miles from shore. Once installed in the offshore WEA, any sight of turbines will be obscured by coastal haze on most days, and, on very clear days, the turbines may be visible on the horizon, particularly from high points like Trinidad Head. On clear nights, blinking red lights placed on top of the turbines to keep aircraft safe may be visible. Some onshore wind turbines use an Aircraft Detection Lighting System (ADLS) (2) or “Demand Oriented Lighting” (3), which senses when aircraft come within a certain distance from a wind turbine and automatically turns on. Vineyard Offshore (4), one of the developers of the Humboldt WEA, has incorporated an ADLS into its Vineyard Wind (5) project off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. For that project, Vineyard Wind anticipates that the ADLS will limit the use of warning lights to less than four hours per year (6).

Take a look below at visualizations of the proposed offshore wind turbines (7) as seen from Sue-meg State Park, produced by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM):