Acoustic Noise Emission in Wind Turbine: An Overview

Abstract

Abstract: Wind energy embarks its development from the California era to the construction of huge onshore and offshore wind farms worldwide, highlighting the main challenges of wind energy applications while meeting the target 1000 GW of wind power by 2030. Though wind energy is considered a techno-economically matured energy, it is not entirely free from impacts on the environment and human health. Concurrently, large and small wind turbines are emerging even closer to human habitats, where acoustic noise would be of greater concern. Noise regulations and standards can effectively and fairly facilitate decision-making processes if developed and followed properly. For instance Denmark has a special legislation concerning wind turbines, while others like Sweden, and have used recommendations originally developed for different noise sources. In Germany, the noise level could be related to absolute level or background noise level (standardized, measured or related to wind speed) as in France. There showed a correspondence between sound pressure level and noise annoyance in the field studies performed across the globe among people living in the vicinity of wind turbines. Globally the annoyance and adverse health effects are analyzed by approaches such as epidemiological studies that rely on masked survey and clinical case studies. Wind turbine noise its propagation, relevant regulations, and impacts from wind farms were reviewed in this paper by summarizing existing studies. The intention of this paper is to provide state-of-art about wind turbine noise associated with wind turbines/farms to developers and planners.