Yeah, I've seen it with windfarms. Always wondered why do they need to blink at the same time. The scale of the blink is pretty jarring at night (but also awe-some, in the same way any big enough infrastructure project inspires a kind of awe).
Wind farms have a certain amount of nimbyism because they "spoil the natural landscape." (So do regular farms -- nothing natural about grain silos or row crops, but that's a side topic...) Anyways, having that many towers blink in unison across that big a landscape is a weird effect when you first see it. I think there's an argument that if they blinked independently it would feel more natural in a way.
But since the blinking is all FAA requirements, I assume it's to help identify all the individual towers from the air. I suppose if they were all blinking independently, it would be a predator-trying-to-focus-on-a-single-zebra-in-the-herd problem, except in this case the predator is a pilot trying not to crash into a turbine.
Sure would emit more subtle 'part of the landscape' vibes though.
(Which I guess is exactly what you don't want when you're flying above them. Sigh.)
It's so pilots see the entire wind farm as a single entity and can interpret what they see and understand the extent of the wind farm easily. There is a pretty good study you can read on this:
As to community impact, radar-activated lighting is an approach that is being used in places this is a concern. It allows the lights to remain off unless there is a plane within the envelope that requires the lights to activate. It's expensive though.
This is a safety measure. You can't rely on ALL aircraft having functional (or installed) transponders. You must actively sense incoming craft because they don't always politely announce themselves.
At small unattended airfields, you can sometimes turn on the field lights by transmitting on a particular frequency (as if you were calling the non-existent tower in quick succession).
Wind farms have a certain amount of nimbyism because they "spoil the natural landscape." (So do regular farms -- nothing natural about grain silos or row crops, but that's a side topic...) Anyways, having that many towers blink in unison across that big a landscape is a weird effect when you first see it. I think there's an argument that if they blinked independently it would feel more natural in a way.
But since the blinking is all FAA requirements, I assume it's to help identify all the individual towers from the air. I suppose if they were all blinking independently, it would be a predator-trying-to-focus-on-a-single-zebra-in-the-herd problem, except in this case the predator is a pilot trying not to crash into a turbine.
Sure would emit more subtle 'part of the landscape' vibes though.
(Which I guess is exactly what you don't want when you're flying above them. Sigh.)