Wind turbine sound - metric and guidelines

The meteorological conditions vary over the globe but also change over the day and the year and vary a lot depending on the terrain for a certain location. The meteorological parameters govern both the wind turbine emission sound levels and the sound propagation conditions and therefore gives rise to different sound immission levels. Long-time measurements of meteorological effects on sound propagation from wind turbines over forest areas have been performed at two sites in Sweden for more than two years. One site is located in the southern part with flat terrain and the other site is located in the northern part of Sweden with more hilly terrain. The aim of the project is to improve the knowledge of sound propagation from wind turbines and especially over varying terrain and weather conditions. Control measurements of wind turbine immission sound levels will be needed to see that they fulfill the noise regulations. It is therefore of most importance to be able to make representative measurements. Discussions about under what meteorological conditions the immission measurements have to be carried out, the sound metric and the impact of the guidelines are presented in this paper.