Reduction of wind-turbine-generated seismic noise with structural measures

Abstract

Abstract. Reducing wind turbine noise recorded at seismological stations promises to lower the conflict between renewable energy producers and seismologists. Seismic noise generated by the movement of wind turbines has been shown to travel large distances, affecting seismological stations used for seismic monitoring and/or the detection of seismic events. In this study, we use advanced 3D numerical techniques to study the possibility of using structural changes in the ground on the wave path between the wind turbine and the seismic station in order to reduce or mitigate the noise generated by the wind turbine. Testing a range of structural changes around the foundation of the wind turbine, such as open and filled cavities, we show that we are able to considerably reduce the seismic noise recorded by placing empty circular trenches approx. 10 m away from the wind turbines. We show the expected effects of filling the trenches with water. In addition, we study how relatively simple topographic elevations influence the propagation of the seismic energy generated by wind turbines and find that topography does help to reduce wind-turbine-induced seismic noise.

The impact of seismic noise produced by wind turbines on seismic borehole measurements

“…Moreover, additional structural measures (e.g. filled trenches) as studied by Abreu et al (2022) could be included in the simulation to incorporate the noise-reducing effects due to boreholes as well as structural measures.…”

“…The systematic decays of the corresponding signal amplitudes with distance from the WT or wind farms (WFs) have been analysed at various WFs (Neuffer and Kremers, 2017;Limberger et al, 2021;Gaßner and Ritter, 2023). Analytical and numerical approaches to modelling the amplitudes have been developed in terms of considering single WTs (Gortsas et al, 2017;Lerbs et al, 2020;Abreu et al, 2022) and complete WFs (Limberger et al, 2021(Limberger et al, , 2022, including wave field interferences from multiple WTs. On this basis, methods for predicting and reducing seismic noise from WTs or other noise sources are developed taking into account, for example, meta-materials (Colombi et al, 2016;Abreu et al, 2022), interferences and topographic effects (Limberger et al, 2021(Limberger et al, , 2022, and denoising methods (e.g.…”

Joint Analysis of Resident Complaints, Meteorological, Acoustic, and Ground Motion Data to Establish a Robust Annoyance Evaluation of Wind Turbine Emissions

“…Modelling of WT related ground motion propagation can be studied analytically for homogeneous subsurfaces [42] or by the application of finite-element modelling for arbitrary subsurface (e.g., Ref. [43]), but is beyond the scope of this paper. In surveys of residents living in the vicinity of wind farms vibrations have been named as a disturbing property of WT operation (e.g., Ref.…”

Simulation of ground motion emissions from wind turbines in low mountain ranges: implications for amplitude decay prediction

“…So far, two possibilities to suppress WT emissions have been discussed. One is the suppression of emissions by structural measures which has been analyzed with synthetic wave field simulations by Abreu et al [2022]. Another method is the suppression of WT emissions and other noise signals through AI algorithms which has been successfully applied by Heuel and Friederich [2022].…”