Comparison of compliance results obtained from the various wind farm standards used in Australia

摘要

There are a number of standards and guidelines which are used in Australia for the assessment of wind farm noise. While there is some variation in the lower noise limit applied, the standards and guidelines typically set noise criteria for wind farms as 40 dB(A) or the background noise level + 5 dB(A), whichever is the greater. Additionally, they provide different methods for measuring compliance once the wind farm is operational. This paper examines the differences that result when assessing compliance against the various measurement and analysis procedures. Compliance measurements from a number of receivers surrounding several wind farm sites are used in the analysis. Differences of between 1.9 and 4.3 dB(A) are observed between the highest and lowest assessment results obtained at individual receivers, although this range is reduced to 1.9 - 2.7 dB(A) when L_(Aeq) results that appeared to be influenced by extraneous noise are discarded. These results complement the findings of our other paper which compares predicted levels against the compliance measurement results, and can be used to compare predictions against wind turbine noise levels measured and analysed using different methodologies.