On-shore wind power potential in Poland: A GIS-Based analysis of distance regulations

• Buffer zone size impacts wind deployment: from 10.9% to 0.1% of Poland’s land area. • The annual generation potential ranges from 3.7 to 739.9 TWh depending on scenario. • Significant spatial mismatch between demand and supply is observed on county level. In Poland’s future decarbonized power system, wind energy is expected to play a dominant role in delivering clean, relatively inexpensive, but still non-dispatchable energy. Over the years, multiple regulations have been proposed, discussed, and implemented when it comes to the criteria under which wind farms can be located. This resulted in a very “chaotic” development pattern of this energy source in the recent decade. Considering the above, this work aims at performing a high-resolution analysis based on the most recent spatial data to reveal the onshore wind power potential (km 2 of land suitable for wind turbines and GW in terms of installed nameplate capacity) across Poland. The analysis was performed based on existing regulations plus additional scenarios concerning the distance between wind turbines and residential buildings, namely 10 h (here 1700 m), 700 m, 500 m, and 200 m (as in some regions across the world). A multicriteria approach was applied, where each spatial constraint was treated in a binary manner—areas were considered suitable only if all criteria were simultaneously satisfied. After estimating the available area, the OpenStreetMap data containing information about existing wind turbines along with their installed capacity was used to derive country-specific power density of wind parks in Poland. Based on a representative sample of 110 clusters, the median and mean power densities were found to be 7.07 MW/km 2 and 8.89 MW/km 2 . Leveraging these assumptions, the onshore wind power potential was estimated at 239.5 GW for the most liberal 200-meter distance, 105.1 GW for the currently discussed 500-meter distance, 56.4 GW for the 700-meter distance, and 1.3 GW for the most conservative 10 h distance. Achieving this potential will require addressing spatial mismatches between supply and demand and overcoming regulatory, environmental, and grid infrastructure constraints.