Experimental investigation on noise characteristics of small scale vertical axis wind turbines in urban environments

Shoutu Li, Qin Chen, Ye Li, Stefan Pröbsting, Congxin Yang, Xiaobo Zheng, Yannian Yang, Weijun Zhu, Wenzhong Shen, Faming Wu, Deshun Li, Tongguang Wang and Shitang Ke

Renewable Energy, 2022, vol. 200, issue C, 970-982

Abstract: Noise pollution from wind turbines has been receiving significant attention with the rapid increase in global wind power installation, especially in urban environments where population density is high. Several countries tried to quantify the relation between wind turbine design characteristics and noise impact levels. To date, no quantitative results have been presented, while it is believed that the vertical axis wind turbine has advantages compared to horizontal axis wind turbines in certain applications. With the purpose to enhance understanding of noise pollution caused by vertical axis wind turbines in the urban environment, a systematic experimental test campaign in an anechoic wind tunnel was conducted. The results demonstrate that low-frequency noise increasingly affects humans when the wind speed increases. The blade-passing frequency is identified as a major parameter in the generation of low-frequency noise. More importantly, the noise pollution from various designs is discussed to analyze the impacts on humans and various animals. These designs are analyzed according to national standards from different countries. It is found that an optimal design of a vertical axis wind turbine is suitable for the urban environment with minimal noise impact.

Keywords: Wind energy; Vertical axis wind turbine; Small scale wind turbine; Noise impact; Urban environment; Acoustics wind tunnel test (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148122014598
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:200:y:2022:i:c:p:970-982

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2022.09.099

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().