Green Building Forum - Wind farm noise in court

Wind farm noise in court

Joiner — Mon, 07 May 2012 09:00:13 +0100

Apparently plenty of wind, just the wrong sort then?

Wind farm noise in court

windy lamb — Mon, 07 May 2012 10:56:59 +0100

That Gaia in Palgrave must be very near houses. Mine is 110m from my house and you can never hear it inside. Mind you, as I've said before, you can clearly hear it out side and if that was a neighbour's garden I would expect them to be unhappy - not sure it would ever be enough to be Stat. Nuisance though.

And, yes, declaring a Stat. Nuisance is entirely subjective and need not be based on any measured noise data, the noise just needs to be witnessed (heard) by the EHO and considered to be at a level to be a Stat. Niusance. Noise data would, of course, help if you went to court but it's not essential. Example being a barking dog, more useful to count the number of barks in any hour rather than to know the dB level.

Wind farm noise in court

windy lamb — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:01:43 +0100

That Palgrave Community Centre - The turbine installer should have told them it was an unsuitable location. OK the area may be on flat land but it's surrounded by houses on two sides, commercial units to the west and they're building a new housing estate about 150m away. I would have thought there will be significant turbulence not with standing the noise issues. The installer should have given appropriate advice rather than make a fast quid and told them that PV would be a better bet.
Anyway, this is a perfect example of where the inappropriate siting of a turbine will have the effect of making it more difficult for turbines to be sited at appropriate locations- the local councillors are much more likely to refuse planning even on an isolated farm. Madness!

Wind farm noise in court

CWatters — Thu, 10 May 2012 16:31:41 +0100

http://www.thisissouthwales.co.uk/learn-mistakes/story-16030531-detail/story.html

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Carmarthen Journal

IN their manifesto for the council election last Thursday, the Conservatives promised that local communities would be their own decision makers on planning and other matters directly affecting their daily lives.

Imposing wind farms on the Welsh countryside's small and powerless local communities doesn't only affect their daily lives â€” it affects their nightly rest even more so.

It amounts to a gradual ethnic cleansing. The proof is the effect of Alltwalis wind farm on the villagers of Gwyddgrug. The developers promised the locals that there would be no noise or any other disturbance, despite their voiced concern about when the wind blows in from that direction and the local topography, but the end result has been the complete ruin of their lives.

They can't sleep, they are suffering from headaches, nausea and panic attacks, they even have to take drugs to be able to carry on with their lives because they can't sell their houses so that they can run away from these towering monsters.

They have recently submitted a petition signed by more than 1,000 people, who deplore the fact that something like that can happen in our country in the 21st century, begging for these noisy monsters to be turned off during unsociable hours â€” as the law actually dictates â€” so that at least they can get some sleep. So far nothing has been done and the people of Gwyddgrug still can't sleep! Shameful, isn't it?

This undemocratic and inhumane situation is threatening to be repeated if councillors elected to Carmarthenshire Council approve the planning application from the wind farm developers RES on Llanllwni Mountain.

Shouldn't we learn from our mistakes?

Kay Hamza

Llanllwni

Wind farm noise in court

Joiner — Thu, 10 May 2012 17:08:37 +0100

It's been going on for a LONG time and the developers have just ignored the complaints...

http://www.jonathanedwards.org.uk/calls-for-alltwalis-wind-farm-to-be-shut-down?lang=en

As 'windy' has said, the industry is becoming its own worst enemy and proving its harshest critics right.

Wind farm noise in court

windy lamb — Thu, 10 May 2012 17:23:45 +0100

I thought that Carmarthen CC Development Plan had adopted a "No turbine within 1.5km of any dwelling" policy. So that's effectively no more turbines. Oh, that's right it won't affect TAN8 areas and big wind farms just your local farmer wanting a 10kw machine. Good thinking Batman!

Wind farm noise in court

ted — Thu, 10 May 2012 18:16:07 +0100

The Carmarthenshire Local Development Plan has got the 1.5km buffer zone in it - but it has yet to be approved by the Welsh government, and until such time it is still just a draft. Even with the 1.5 km zone there would still be room for about 1/2 of the planned turbines. See http://www.caerdelyn.co.uk/wind-map.html

The full story of the Alltwalis problems and opposition to the Brechfa West planned development is being put together here - http://www.windscamgwynt.org.uk/

Wind farm noise in court

windy lamb — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:37:05 +0100

Looks like someones turned the Alltwalis turbines off. Not moved for a couple of days even though the wind is a bit fresh. Maintenance or problems?

Wind farm noise in court

ted — Fri, 11 May 2012 16:18:42 +0100

They are stationary now and it has been quite windy for the past couple of days. We did have a 1.5 hour power cut last night too.

I'll try and find out if anyone knows why they are not working.

Wind farm noise in court

ted — Tue, 15 May 2012 09:51:53 +0100

Just been doing a little more work on my next submission to the NPI (now replace the IPC who no longer exist).

Found a couple of useful things:

A web-page calculator that implements ISO 9613-1:

http://resource.npl.co.uk/acoustics/techguides/absorption/

You can feed this different temperatures and rh values to see what effect altering them has on noise attenuation.

I also have a copy of ISO 9613-2 which I retrieved from a website. A google search should turn up several sources.

This standard covers the methods that wind farm developers use to calculate atmospheric attenuation of noise. It is most interesting to see the conditions and error bands that are attached to some of the calculations.

Funnily wind farm developers seem very reticent about mentioning most of those in their documents.

Wind farm noise in court

ted — Tue, 15 May 2012 10:06:01 +0100

Here's a graph of atmospheric attenuation varying by temperature for a range of frequencies. This has been generated from data from the NPL calculator and transferred to a spreadsheet. This is for 102 kPa atmospheric pressure and 70% rh. Note that the y-axis is a log scale. Changing pressure and rh over normal conditions has very little impact on the results although very low rh (<30%) does increase attenuation significantly.

Wind farm noise in court

CWatters — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:54:25 +0100

That graph is interesting. It shows that low frequency noise <250Hz is attenuated less than 1 dB per kilometer. That's virtually no attenuation.

Wind farm noise in court

billt — Tue, 15 May 2012 19:45:45 +0100

But LF is usually radiated omni-directionally so is subject to the inverse square law, reduces by 6dB for every doubling of distance. The ear is also much less sensitive at LF, maybe 40-50 dB less sensitive at 60Hz as at 2.5kHz. So if the LF noise were 60dB spl at 10M from the source it would be 40dB at 100M and 20dB at 1kM, which is below the threshold of hearing at frequencies below 100Hz.

Wind farm noise in court

CWatters — Tue, 15 May 2012 22:36:27 +0100

Some sources say 3db per doubling as LF from a wind farm behaves more like a line source for some reason (perhaps because the blades are linear sources?)

One of the problems I have understanding what's going on is illustrated by the graph on page 35 in here..

http://dasam.dk/Dasam_upload/dokumenter/noise_from_wind_turbines.pdf

It shows that noise levels from a Vestas V80 peak at low frequencies (20db louder than from a road or aircraft). Other references say that high frequencies don't travel as far as low frequencies so that should skew noise levels at near by houses even more towards the low frequencies.

Wind farm noise in court

ted — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:31:57 +0100

At different frequencies you need to account for the 'phon contour' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour - although I don't think that this makes any allowance for low frequency effects that are not via the ear.

Wind farm noise in court

ted — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:50:52 +0100

Ah, I see it is mentioned on p12 of the Pedersen document. Difficult to see how it is included in the later parts though.

Wind farm noise in court

ted — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:49:10 +0100

Not sure if this has been mentioned before but I have just discovered it:

Wind Farm Noise Statutory Nuisance Complaint Methodology. A report for DEFRA in April 2011.

http://www.defra.gov.uk/publications/files/pb-13584-windfarm-noise-statutory-nuisance.pdf

It's status appears to be DEFRA's accepted current guidance on Statutory Nuisance for wind farms for Local Authorities.

Wind farm noise in court

CWatters — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:03:09 +0100

That was interesting. One of the authors of that DEFRA report works for wind energy companies. He did the background noise monitoring for one near me.

Wind farm noise in court

windy lamb — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:17:19 +0100

After 60 pages it basically concluded that one should investigate the complaint of noise the same way as EHO's have always done. So nothing new there then. Just go to the flow chart at the end - same as one in an Environmental Health text book I've got, printed in 1992. Progress?

Wind farm noise in court

CWatters — Mon, 21 May 2012 15:19:49 +0100

looking back at the data obtained by REF from Salford under FOI I'm puzzled...

http://www.ref.org.uk/Files/jc.lm.salford.data.comment.07.02.09.c.pdf

Many of the councils that responed described the noise as:

Swish, Swoosh, Beating, Thudding, Thumping or Pulsating

but either said this wasn't Amplitude Modulated Noise or that they didn't know. How can those types of noise NOT be Amplitude Modulated?

Wind farm noise in court

DamonHD — Mon, 21 May 2012 15:29:07 +0100

Because they are maybe not modulating the amplitude of a second (carrier) signal, eg like AM radio?

Rgds

Damon

Wind farm noise in court

CWatters — Mon, 21 May 2012 15:45:56 +0100

I don't think that's possible.

The words swish and swoosh counjour up something that lasts around a second or so and has soft leading and trailing edges. If there was no underlying "carrier" (tone or white noise) you would just have an impulse lasting around a second with slow leading and trailing edges. The components would be all at frequencies too low to be audible.

Wind farm noise in court

JSHarris — Mon, 21 May 2012 16:32:20 +0100

If the sound is varying in amplitude, then it's being amplitude modulated, so I don't think there can be any doubt that sounds that are described with terms like "swish", "swoosh", "beating", "thudding", "thumping" or "pulsating" are amplitude modulated. The term strictly applies to any varying amplitude signal, but my guess is that many non-technically aware people may not realise its proper meaning.

Wind farm noise in court

englishjohn — Mon, 21 May 2012 16:46:27 +0100

I know this will sound petty and off subject so don't take it to seriously but can I take car/motorcycle manufacturers or their users to court over the constant noise they produce? The roar of the acceleration the drone of people cruising along ect. Its there all the time, yet nobody seems to moan about this, or not as much. The occasional whooshing/swooshing noise makes a refreshing change, though I would prefer it if everything we used was silent including my dog and better half, though what noise she does make normally makes more sense than me. I have two turbines very near my house and one close to my place of work. Maybe the difference is that with people including myself get an immediate positive effect of being able to use and benefit from its use, whereas a turbine doesn't. We know as it spins it produces electricity but it has no immediate effect upon me, my tv works no different, I cannot actually see a difference apparat from the actual large turbine spinning away....
Anyway, just thought it was time I added my own two cents not that it is anything more than hot air.
Wrote on my iPhone so excuse all the errors.

Wind farm noise in court

JSHarris — Mon, 21 May 2012 17:16:35 +0100

The main issue from those affected seems to be the near-continuous, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, nature of the noise, together with the fact that, being at a very low frequency, it penetrates everywhere in a house and cannot easily be reduced or eliminated with soundproofing.

I suppose that the other important factor is choice. If someone buys a house near to a road, airport or whatever they shouldn't be surprised to find that they hear some noise. If someone buys a house in a quiet location then they don't expect it to get noisy, either from a road or from a windfarm.

Wind farm noise in court

CWatters — Mon, 21 May 2012 20:14:23 +0100

Yeah funny how at 2am the thump thump thump from the neighbours hifi will keep you awake more readily than a stream of cars going past. Perhaps because the bass penetrates walls more readily and rooms resonate at low frequencies?

Graph of Percentage of people annoyed vs volume from Pedersen, E. and K. Persson Waye. 2004..

http://tinyurl.com/d64khqx

Wind farm noise in court

windy lamb — Mon, 21 May 2012 22:27:48 +0100

I thought that wind turbines were really inefficient and only worked a tiny percentage of the time, so how can their noise be near continuous 24 hrs/day, 7 days/week noise. One can't argue both points (not that JSH has).
So they are; either constantly generating electricity but intolerably noisy in the process or hardly ever working but noisy when they do. So which is it then?

Wind farm noise in court

ted — Mon, 21 May 2012 23:19:34 +0100

Load factor of 25% doesn't mean that the turbines aren't spinning nearly all the time.

Wind farm noise in court

Ed Davies — Mon, 21 May 2012 23:31:17 +0100

Posted By: CWattersYeah funny how at 2am the thump thump thump from the neighbours hifi will keep you awake more readily than a stream of cars going past.

Wonder how much of that is psychological: cars are â€œsupposedâ€ to go past whereas the noise from the hifi is because the neighbour is a thoughtless b'stard. Similarly, if you hate wind turbines because they symbolize the idea that if you don't think about your own energy use you too are thoughtless b'stard the sound from them will annoy you more than if it's your own turbine charging your own battery so you can have a hot breakfast in the morning.

Wind farm noise in court

Joiner — Tue, 22 May 2012 09:00:31 +0100

Can we get this clear once again, for the benefit of those who haven't the time to read back over the whole of this thread, where all of these "issues" have already been covered in some depth, the emerging picture now is one of people complaining about EXISTING turbines, not people objecting to the prospect of turbines. Moreover, that many of the people COMPLAINING ABOUT existing turbines were originally IN FAVOUR of them, thinking them a good thing, especially as the developers concerned had given assurances that noise probably wouldn't occur and that, if it did, it wouldn't be a problem. Oh, and in the unlikely event that noise did actually occur and annoy anyone then it could be "mitigated". Hmmm.

You see, the trouble is that wind FARM developers have consistently proved THEMSELVES to be liars. There's too much money to be made for it to be any other way.