Modeling of noise impact of different noise sources near wind plant

Abstract

Wind energy in nowadays is a necessity that helps to transform the energy economy towards the sustainable energy developments. Some difficulties that wind power plant expansion faces is related to community acceptance. It is now clear that annoyance from wind turbine noise occurs to a higher degree at low noise levels than noise annoyance from other sources of community. Therefore, it should be analyzed in more details the cases when wind plant impact is related to other impacts of human activities. The aim of the study is to analyze noise impact of road traffic flow to the noise levels in the vicinity of wind plant. For the study was chosen wind plant near Vydmantai and the road A11 Šiauliai- Palanga. Noise levels were measured downwind from the wind plant and upright to the road. Then traffic noise was modeled using GIS-based traffic noise prediction software MapNoise and Computer Aided Noise Assessment software CadnaA. It is shown that the wind plant noise at the distance around 200 m decreases to the background level whereas the road traffic noise is the main factor of noise at the selected area. Modeling was applied for the traffic noise calculation for different traffic flow. It is shown that the area in the very vicinage around the Vydmantai plant tower is masked by traffic noise when traffic flow exceeds 5000 vehicles per day. Also it is shown that because of nature of wind turbine noise, it is difficult to adjust measured sound pressure values to community annoyance.