Annoyance, detection and recognition of wind turbine noise

Abstract

Annoyance, recognition and detection of noise from a single wind turbine was studied by means of a two-stage listening experiment with 50 participants with normal hearing abilities. In-situ recordings made at close distance from a 1.8-MW wind turbine operating at 22 rpm were mixed with road traffic noise, and processed to simulate indoor sound pressure levels at L Aeq 40 dBA. In a first part, where people were unaware of the true purpose of the experiment, samples were played during a quiet leisure activity. Under these conditions, pure wind turbine noise gave very similar annoyance ratings as unmixed highway noise at the same equivalent level, while annoyance by local road traffic noise was significantly higher. In a second experiment, listeners were asked to identify the sample containing wind turbine noise in a paired comparison test. The detection limit of wind turbine noise in presence of highway noise was estimated to be as low as a signal-to-noise ratio of -23 dBA. When mixed with local road traffic, such a detection limit could not be determined. These findings support that noticing the sound could be an important aspect of wind turbine noise annoyance at the low equivalent levels typically observed indoors in practice. Participants that easily recognized wind-turbine(-like) sounds could detect wind turbine noise better when submersed in road traffic noise. Recognition of wind turbine sounds is also linked to higher annoyance. Awareness of the source is therefore a relevant aspect of wind turbine noise perception which is consistent with previous research.

Using Virtual Reality for assessing the role of noise in the audio-visual design of an urban public space

“…Most likely, people will focus more on the highway noise and could take it stronger into account while rating. Similar effects were found in other noise-related studies (Van Renterghem, Bockstael, De Weirt, & Botteldooren, 2013).…”

Health Effects Related to Wind Turbine Sound, Including Low-Frequency Sound and Infrasound

“…The test sounds used were (1) sound from moving cars, passing at a rate of 1-4 per second; (2) broadband sound with the same spectrum as wind turbines and (3) narrowband sound that could be modulated at 1, 2 and 4 Hz. All three types of sound had modulation depths typical for wind turbines at 3, 6 and 9 dB similar to Van Renterghem et al [84], or zero (no modulation). Results showed that AM did increase annoyance in the case of broadband sound and passing cars, but not for the narrow band sound.…”

“…[89,95,96]. In both studies [93,94] attention was given to expectations on the level of annoyance and the level of awareness ('notice') of the characteristics and prominent sounds of wind turbines [84]. The influence of these factors has been found in many studies regarding the effects of other sound sources [97].…”

Wind turbine sound pressure level calculations at dwellings

“…Wind turbine noise (WTN) can be difficult to distinguish from ambient sound (Pedersen and Halmstad, 2003;Van Renterghem et al, 2013) and varies with weather conditions. As a result, calculations can be more representative of long-term levels than estimates based solely on measurements (ISO, 2007).…”