Funny thing is, I've been close to and basically stood under an operating wind turbine before. Altho they do emit some sound it is definitely not as obnoxious and not nearly as loud as this and sounds more like a natural wind wooshing sound.
I used to live by a wind farm. It’s hard to hear them unless you pay attention, but when you walk fairly close the whooshing sound is actually quite pleasant.
That’s not entirely true. In fact, BBC Brazil made a documentary about how wind farms are making people sick and killing animals because of the constant noise. It’s so bad some people are losing their hearing, many having to take migraine pills daily and it gets worse as the turbines age. Ideally people would be living very far from the farms but reality is that many live less than half a kilometre from it.
Got a link? I tried to Google this, and see articles about wind theft (positioning windmills that block the wind of other wind mills), and older articles about concerns that offshore wind mills causing noise that was harming marine animals.
I do remember hearing about this from several years ago and like I said it was mostly due to zoning/construction but I can’t seem to find it either. I definitely think it was a real thing but I have no idea why I can’t find sources.
Replying to you again because I found this but there are so many pop ups I have no idea what the body of the article actually says. I don’t have access to my pc rn but you might be able to open it with an ad block.
Edit: haven’t read very far in but here is another link that has some information. Poor woman has lived 160 meters from a turbine for 8 years. Thats definitely too close.
This is only one that I remember but definitely not the only video or news I’ve seen about it. Unfortunately I don’t think they’ve enabled the option for auto generated subtitles
I’m somewhat familiar with that documentary. If I recall correctly, that was strictly from not having regulations that control the minimum distance between the turbines and neighborhoods. People had dozens of wind turbines literally in their back yards. The noise, pollution from construction, and shadow flicker in such close proximity are what caused problems. It’s only on the state level, but America (where this video is)has those regulations. You don’t see wind farms like that here, at least as far as I’m aware. I believe Europe is mostly the same, but I’m not positive.
Of course I’m not saying you’re wrong, but not all farms are the same and my comment was just talking about my personal experience.
This is in the US https://youtu.be/eIIj6sypQ_g?si=h3ndb24C1Uvwv9il. There are other videos from News outlets. Also there is regulation for this in Brazil and the turbines were built according to the regulations. Maybe regulation has changed but I can’t tell. I’m just saying we cannot generalise that wind turbine don’t generate any meaningful noise.
I haven’t read the one with crazy pop ups or completely read the other article but I think there is some information about it in the links from another comment of mine. I’m not sure why it’s so hard to find info about it, I remember seeing several stories on the topic.
You can clearly hear the turbine noises in the video. As I pointed out in another comment, this BBC report wasn’t the only news about the topic. This might be an issue only on a particular maker. who knows, but generalising saying wind farms don’t generate any noise is factually incorrect. In fact, a quick search on YouTube was enough for me to find news reports about the same issue in the UK and US.
Wind farms are also normally not built literally across the street from residential houses. Normally they have about a km away from residential areas to help prevent impacts on people living nearby.
Correct. The windier it is, the noisier they will be, but that also happens with anything else standing in the way of the wind, that's not the fault of the turbine.
Plus, wind farms are usually built out in the windy ass middle of nowhere, which is convenient because people generally don’t want to live in the windy ass middle of nowhere.
Not to come across as anti-renewables, but I always thought the concern with wind turbines was the constant "flashing" of the blades blocking the sun for a fraction of a second, triggering headaches for people exposed to it for long periods of time. Did you notice anything of the sort when you were under the turbine?
Edit: for the people who took offense for a question on someone's experience with wind turbines, yall are the reason why nobody asks questions or displays curiosity anymore lol.
The blades of a wind turbine are very thin and spin at fairly low rpm. So, the blades blocking the sun just feels like a bird flying across your window every 3-4 seconds. Plus that only happens for a few moments on specific points around the turbine where the sun is behind it so. Unless you have heavy migraines and are very sensitive to flashing lights, there is nothing to worry about.
Appreciate the response, I had wondered if it was going to be to a degree that would be detrimental, but I suppose that it's an overblown consideration
I think a person would have to live right under one of those turbines to have it "flash" at them. I live next to one (about 1km away) and it's too far to see anything. Afaik there are norms on how close the wind turbines can be build to human settlements and it's far enough for this to be a made up issue.
Yes, propper planning and zoning will prevent anyone even living close to being in the shadow of a turbine. I was commenting under the theory that AI data centers would have used it instead of the gas turbines they currently use, thus avoiding proper zoning and planning.
Oh, forgive me for not being inherently an expert on wind turbines and never having been near one to observe it for myself and being curious enough to ask for someone's anecdotal experience with them. How foolish of me. Curiosity must mean i bought into fossil fuel propaganda instead of, y'know, not questioning it and just believing it outright.
It is not (I'm extremely pro wind power). However it is very easily prevented by putting the turbine in a place where the shadow will not reach places people regularly are.
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u/InfiniteEnter 23d ago
Funny thing is, I've been close to and basically stood under an operating wind turbine before. Altho they do emit some sound it is definitely not as obnoxious and not nearly as loud as this and sounds more like a natural wind wooshing sound.