Thursday, 24 November 2005
Are Wind Farms Noisy?
The question: Is wind power noisy?
The answer: No.
Jon and I took a visit to the current nearest wind farm to us. This is situated near Bradworthy, and consists of three wind turbines. Here's a photo:
It was great to watch them working away, although, due to their white colour, they blended in pretty well with the clouds.
We were unable to stand underneath them to do our test of the noise of the turbines, but we still managed to get pretty close to them - closer than the above photo, which I took from the car as we left. Were we able to hold a conversation without raising our voices when we got close to them? Yes, except for at times, due to the noise of the wind - it was very cold and gusty there! Perfect place for a wind farm!
The turbines themselves were very quiet and a lot of the time their noise was drowned out by the wind, or by passing vehicles, such as the tractor that went past us on its way to feed the animals in the field with one of the turbines.
It was brilliant to see. I strongly urge people to find out where their nearest wind farm is (use this wind farm locator) and have a look for themselves at these machines in action.
The two proposed wind farms near to us will both be bigger than this one. The one at Batsworthy Cross proposes nine turbines, and the one at Fullabrook Down could be as large as twenty-two turbines! However, I don't think the size will cause a huge difference to the noise levels. Three times almost nothing is still almost nothing, and seven times almost nothing is not a great amount, either.
On the way back, we took a short detour into Cornwall, which was fun. :) Louis, if you read this, Cornwall says hi!
