Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Noise and remediation

This is an interesting article on noise issues regarding wind farms. One conclusion is that by raising the cut-in speed, i.e., the wind speed when the turbines start spinning, the perceived noise is greatly reduced. The amount of power produced at low wind speeds is so small that is often not significant financially.

Some of the comments discuss various decibel (noise) readings, and what is acceptable. I guess I have to find a dB meter and start measuring. Anybody have one?

Turbine noise

2 comments:

  1. The ocean has a lot of white noise of its own as the waves hit the shore; are statistics about the ocean noise available? How would this compare to a turbine in a low wind condition?

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  2. It has been quite difficult to find real data with all the noise on the Internet (pun intended). I would think the surf would generally drown out any sound, but I would like more than my hunch. I have found sound studies with trees, but not with surf yet.

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