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. 2021 Dec 21;19(1):23.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph19010023.

Quantification of Sound Exposure from Wind Turbines in France

David Ecotière  1 , Patrick Demizieux  1 , Gwenaël Guillaume  1 , Lise Giorgis-Allemand  2 , Anne-Sophie Evrard  2
Affiliations

Quantification of Sound Exposure from Wind Turbines in France

David Ecotière et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

The WHO guidelines on environmental noise highlight that evidence on the health effects of wind turbine sound levels is either non-existent or of poor quality. In this context, a feasibility study was conducted in France in 2017. The objective was to suggest a methodology for calculating wind turbine sound levels in order to quantify the number of windfarms' residents exposed to this sound. Based on a literature review, the Harmonoise model was selected for sound exposure calculation. It was validated by quantifying its uncertainties, and finally used to estimate the population exposed to wind turbine sound in metropolitan France. Compared to other environmental noise sources (e.g., transportation), sound exposure is very moderate, with more than 80% of the exposed people exposed to sound levels below 40 dBA. The total number of people exposed to more than 30 dBA is about 686,000 and 722,000 people for typical daytime and night-time meteorological conditions respectively, i.e., about 1% of the French population in 2017. These results represent the first ever assessment of sound exposure from wind turbines at the scale of the entire metropolitan France.

Keywords: environmental noise; public health; sound exposure; wind turbine.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
General overview of the experimental set-up for the validation of the numerical model. Location of sound level measurements (black points), wind measurements (blue points), wind turbine sound power level measurements (red points), wind turbines (blue crosses).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Localisation of metropolitan French wind farms (2017, www.thewindpower.net, accessed on 1 December 2021).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Example of the result of the calculation of the radiated sound from a wind farm (a), and of the exposure of the buildings in the nearby village enclosed by the black block in (a,b).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Boxplot of the difference between predicted and measured sound levels, for two typical meteorological conditions during the day and night. The wind speed was above 6 m/s and the distance from the wind turbine ranged from 500 m to 1500 m. Number of samples (n), bias (mean), standard uncertainty (sd).
Figure 5
Figure 5
Number of people in metropolitan France exposed to WT sound as a function of WT sound level for daytime and night-time meteorological conditions, normalized by the total number of people exposed to WT sound level above 30 dBA.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Number of people exposed to WT sound level above 30 dBA, by region. Error bars account for the uncertainty of +/−1 standard deviation on the Harmonoise sound level estimate.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Number of people exposed to WT sound levels above 30 dBA for daytime and night-time meteorological conditions, by region, normalized by the total number of exposed people in metropolitan France. Error bars account for the uncertainty of +/−1 standard deviation on the Harmonoise sound level estimate.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Number of people exposed to WT sound level above 30 dBA for daytime and night-time meteorological conditions, by region, normalized by the total population of each region. Error bars account for the uncertainty of +/−1 standard deviation on the Harmonoise sound level estimate.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Number of people exposed to WT sound as a function of WT sound levels, normalized by the total number of people exposed to WT sound levels above 30 dBA: daytime (a) and night-time (b) meteorological conditions.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Proportion (%) of the 2017 French population exposed to sound levels above 40 dBA during the night, for four noise sources: aircraft noise (Air), railway noise (Rail), road traffic noise (Road) and wind turbine noise (WT).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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