June 18, 2019
Australia, Noise

Prevalence of wind farm amplitude modulation at long-range residential locations

Hansen, Kristy; Nguyen, Phuc; Zajamšek, Branko; Catcheside, Peter; and Hansen, Colin

Abstract:
The presence of amplitude modulation (AM) in wind farm noise has been shown to result in increased annoyance. Therefore, it is important to determine how often this characteristic is present at residential locations near a wind farm. This study investigates the prevalence and characteristics of wind farm AM at 9 different residences located near a South Australian wind farm that has been the subject of complaints from local residents. It is shown that an audible indoor low-frequency tone was amplitude modulated at the blade-pass frequency for 20% of the time up to a distance of 2.4 km. The audible AM occurred for a similar percentage of time between wind farm percentage power capacities of 40% and 85%, indicating that it is important that AM analysis is not restricted to high power output conditions only. Although the number of AM events is shown to reduce with distance, audible indoor AM still occurred for 16% of the time at a distance of 3.5 km. At distances of 7.6 and 8.8 km, audible AM was only detected on one occasion. At night-time, audible AM occurred indoors at residences located as far as 3.5 km from the wind farm for up to 22% of the time.

Kristy L. Hansen, Phuc Nguyen, College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, Tonsley, Australia
Branko Zajamšek, Peter Catcheside, College of Medicine, Flinders University, Bedford Park, Australia
Colin H. Hansen, School of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia

Journal of Sound and Vibration
Volume 455, 1 September 2019, Pages 136-149
doi: 10.1016/j.jsv.2019.05.008 [1]

Download original document: “Prevalence of wind farm amplitude modulation at long-range residential locations [2]”

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/documents/prevalence-of-wind-farm-amplitude-modulation-at-long-range-residential-locations/

URLs in this post:

[1] doi: 10.1016/j.jsv.2019.05.008: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsv.2019.05.008

[2] Prevalence of wind farm amplitude modulation at long-range residential locations: https://docs.wind-watch.org/Hansen-long-range-AM.pdf