Photo: Time Magazine
At the University of Massachusetts Amherst Campus, wind power research has been going on for a long time, on campus, and with a test project on a nearby mountain top. In 2002, members of the Renewable Energy Research Lab and the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering published a white paper detailing their studies of Wind Turbine Acoustic Noise.
Their findings indicate strongly that noise should not be a problem with “new” wind turbines (the report was amended in 2006) as long as the site is studied in advance and proper allowances made for height vs distance from nearest homes.
Most of the study deals with smaller turbines, in the few-hundred kW range, while most of the problems involve 1- to 1.5 MW (a factor of 10 larger). The reason I’m recommending this white paper is not to “settle the issue” or anything like that. The goal is to have the numbers and the concepts out there in understandable form for the people who will be making local siting decisions. More importantly, this might help people whose area is being targeted by energy interests far from the proposed wind generating plant.
This report is recommended reading no matter which side of the wind power noise issue you might be on. You can find it at: Wind Turbine Acoustic Noise.
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