Sponsor
The authors wish to acknowledge Seongeun Jeong and Dev Millstein of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for assistance in amassing the NREL meteorological data used in this study. The authors would also like to thank Patrick Gilman, Maggie Yancey, Valerie Reed, and Jocelyn Brown-Saracino of the U.S. DOE, and Jose Zayas, formerly with the DOE, for their support. This work was funded by the Wind Energy Technologies Office within the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy of the DOE, under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.
Published In
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-2019
Subjects
Wind power--Research--United States
Abstract
With results from a nationwide survey sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, factors that affect outdoor audibility and noise annoyance of wind turbines were evaluated. Wind turbine and summer daytime median background sound levels were estimated for 1043 respondents. Wind turbine sound level was the most robust predictor of audibility yet only a weak, albeit significant, predictor of noise annoyance. For each 1 dB increase in wind turbine sound level (L1h-max), the odds of hearing a wind turbine on one's property increased by 31% [odds ratio (OR): 1.31; 95% CI (confidence interval): 1.25–1.38] and the odds of moving to the next level of annoyance increased by 9% (OR: 1.09; 95% CI: 1.02–1.16). While audibility was overwhelmingly dependent on turbine sound level, noise annoyance was best explained by visual disapproval (OR: 11.0; 95% CI: 4.8–25.4). The final models correctly predict audibility and annoyance level for 80% and 62% of individuals, respectively. The results demonstrate that among community members not receiving personal benefits from wind projects, the Community Tolerance Level of wind turbine noise for the U.S. aligns with the international average, further supporting observations that communities are less tolerant of wind turbine noise than other common environmental noise sources at equivalent A-weighted sound levels.
Locate the Document
DOI
10.1121/1.5121309
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/29657
Citation Details
Haac, T. R., Kaliski, K., Landis, M., Hoen, B., Rand, J., Firestone, J., ... & Pohl, J. (2019). Wind turbine audibility and noise annoyance in a national US survey: Individual perception and influencing factors. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 146(2), 1124-1141.
Description
Copyright (2019) Acoustical Society of America
This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the Acoustical Society of America. The following article appeared in (Haac, T. R., Kaliski, K., Landis, M., Hoen, B., Rand, J., Firestone, J., ... & Pohl, J. (2019). Wind turbine audibility and noise annoyance in a national US survey: Individual perception and influencing factors. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 146(2), 1124-1141.) and may be found at (https://doi.org/10.1121/1.5121309)