Human perception of wind farm vibration

Abstract

Survey results have shown that many respondents report to be annoyed by vibration, which they attribute to a wind farm. The aim of this work is to explore wind turbine vibration characteristics and evaluate its effects on humans. The vibration was measured on a bed frame, the floor and a window in three dwellings located 3.3, 5 and 2.4 km from two wind farms in South Australia. It was found that vibration on the window was wind farm related as it contained amplitude modulation. Vibration on the bed and floor was low and dominated by ambient vibration. Evaluation based on the AS 2670-2 (1990) and BS 6472-1 (2008) standards indicated that the vibration levels on the floor are unlikely to cause discomfort or adverse comment. Also, vibration can be associated with local wind speed and low-frequency noise meaning that wind-induced structural vibration could be erroneously attributed to a wind farm.