As per the holding response (below) to the draft Irish wind energy development guidelines, Hayes McKenzie and others have significant concerns over the noise section of this document. Andy and Malcolm have contributed to this response to the consultation draft.
A number of people in our industry have significant concerns over the noise section of the Draft Revised Irish Wind Energy Development Guidelines. We have therefore submitted this holding response to the Irish Government pending a more complete response to the consultation draft.
A new draft of the long-awaited update to the 2006 Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government guidelines on wind energy development in Ireland was published on 12th December 2019. The noise section starts on Page 60 and there are two Technical Appendices at the end.
The long-awaited latest guidance from the World Health Organization was released yesterday (10th October 2018). Of particular interest to Hayes McKenzie is the section specifically concerned with wind turbine noise. A quick flip to Section 34 on page 77 reveals that the WHO are conditionally recommending that turbine noise should not exceed an Lden of 45dB. Lden is the average noise level over one year, where noise during the evening is penalised with a +5 dB correction, and a +10dB correction applied for noise at night. In the case of wind turbine noise, which is continually varying from day to day, depending on the wind speed and direction, it will be almost impossible to establish compliance with this limit through measurement alone. As a means of 'impact' assessment, however, it has some distinct advantages which are discussed in Andy McKenzie's paper for Acoustics Australia in 2012 and in a paper presented at the Institute of Acoustics Autumn Conference in 2015 by Andy along with fellow wind turbine noise specialist Andrew Bullmore. Both of these papers are available in the Publications - Our Published Papers section of this web site.