A wind farm in Cumbria had a history of noise nuisance complaints which has resulted in considerable amount of revenue loss due to turbine curtailments.
Long term deployment of conventional noise monitoring solutions was simply unaffordable. Smarter Microgrid was engaged to substantially increase the operating hours of the wind farm, whilst improving the neighbours relation; by implementation of a next generation Noise Reduction Management System with innovative functionalities, including:
The stations are fully weatherproof, powered via onboard stand alone sustainable power systems. They are also movable to facilitate deployment at different locations across the farm.
Each Noise Station Undertakes:
➜ Noise measurement data collection and local processing
➜ Provision of dual path communication links to cloud and other stations
➜ Feedbacks production curtailment instructions to the wind farm SCADA system in noisy conditions
The overall system problem to be solved included deployment in to a challenging physical environment in Cumbria which meant the stations had to withstand the harsh weather for their expected 6 year lifetime.
The site now has digital ‘ears’ which are utilised to set the performance levels, consequently, turbines are only curtailed during very high noise emission periods.
