SPAWF

Some residents who already live close to other wind farms liken the noise to that of an endless train, or a constant distant pile driving. Do you want to live with what could be a constant noise nuisance day and night?

The following factors are worth noting:

1. Obviously, the closer to a turbine you live the greater the chance of noise being an issue. The nearest house to one of the proposed turbines would be around 640m.

2. Noise would vary depending on the force and direction of the wind. If the wind were from the East then Wimblebury would be down-wind and one would expect any noise to carry more in that direction.

3. Different people have different sensitivities to noise.

4. Turbines can have an effect on one another. Sound waves from one turbine can affect and be affected by sound waves from others. There is potential for small "ripples" of sound from different turbines to build up into much larger "waves" of sound. This effect can become marked at certain distances from turbine clusters.

5. The wind can blow hard at any time of day or night. In the middle of the night when background noise is low the turbines could often be at their noisiest.

6. There has been little research into the noise impacts of larger (102m/130m) turbines. The people with the money to undertake such research are the Government and the wind farm developers - one suspects that they have nothing to gain and everything to lose from such research.

The turbines will have a maximum height of 102 metres (i.e. 334 feet) to the tip. That is significantly taller than anything else in the area to the best of our knowledge - this is even higher than the Statue of Liberty in New York, or Big Ben. They will be visible up to 30kms away. They are amongst the biggest wind turbines proposed for anywhere in the UK.

This illustration shows how a 120m wind turbine compares with some of the highest buildings in the country (the proposed 102m wind turbines would still have the same effect and be considerably taller that these monuments) - Addenbrookes Tower, the University Library and Ely Cathedral. Click the image to enlarge it. Note carefully the tiny 'speck' near the bottom of the turbine. That's a man, shown to scale.

A primary concern for residents living near to the site of the proposed Wind Farm is noise.The wind industry has a history of dismissing the noise problem but those living close to wind farms sometimes find the noise levels completely unacceptable and some have been enraged that assurances about noise given in advance turn out to be worthless. The most intrusive noise comes from the blade moving through the air. The noise is a penetrating, low frequency "thump" each time the blade passes the turbine tower.

Watch The Video!

We invite you to share the experience of these residents suffering from their local wind power station in Cumbria. Please click on the following link and click the video on the right hand side.
http://www.stop-wadlow-wind-farm.org.uk/noise.html

The 'Journal of Sound and Vibration', a respected scientific journal from Elsevier, published an extremely important and rigorously technical paper in 2003 by G.P. van den Berg, 'Effects of the wind profile at night on wind turbine sound'.

The Abstract of this paper reads as follows:
"Since the start of the operation of a 30 MW, 17 turbine wind park, residents living 500m and more from the park have reacted strongly to the noise; residents up to 1900m distance expressed annoyance. To assess actual sound immission, long term measurements (a total of over 400 night hours in 4 months) have been performed at 400m and 1500m from the park. In the original sound assessment a fixed relation between wind speed at reference height (10m) and hub height (98m) had been used. However, measurements show that the wind speed at hub height at night is up to 2.6 times higher than expected, causing a higher rotational speed of the wind turbines and consequentially up to 15 dB higher sound levels, relative to the same reference wind speed in daytime. Moreover,especially at high rotational speeds the turbines produce a 'thumping', impulsive sound, increasing annoyance further. It is concluded that prediction of noise immission at night from (tall)wind turbines is underestimated when measurement data are used (implicitly) assuming a wind profile valid in daytime."

The Journal of Sound and Vibration paper then goes on to say (p.3):
"There is a distinct audible difference between the night and daytime wind turbine sound at some distance from the turbines. On a summer's day in a moderate or even strong wind the turbines may only be heard within a few hundred metres and one might wonder why residents should complain of the sound produced by the wind park. However, on quiet nights the wind park can be heard at distances of up to several kilometres when the turbines rotate at high speed. On these nights, certainly at distances between 500 and 1000m from the wind park, one can hear a low pitched thumping sound with a repetition rate of about once a second (coinciding with the frequency of blades passing a turbine mast), not unlike distant pile driving, superimposed on a constant broadband 'noisy' sound. A resident living at 1.5 km from the wind park describes the sound as 'an endless train'.