An investigation of the influence of the refractive shadow zone on wind turbine noise

This article aims to investigate if the proportion of the rotor area of a wind turbine that is in the refractive shadow zone according to a ray tracing algorithm coupled to meteorological forecast data is correlated to sound levels and amplitude modulation. The acoustic station is situated 950 m from a wind farm in Northern Sweden and the measurement period is seven months. On average, 1.9 dBA lower sound levels are measured when the part of the rotor disk of the closest turbine is in the refractive shadow zone. A higher probability of amplitude modulations are observed when around half of the turbine rotor is within the refractive shadow zone compared to conditions with no shadow zone present.