A Survey of Noise Disturbance in Swedish Farms of Large Wind Turbines

In 2015, a project was initiated to investigate what factors were dominating the perception of wind turbine noise in the vicinities of seven wind farms in Sweden with relatively large wind turbines. The project included, besides two listening tests, a survey of perceptual and socioeconomic factors. In a questionnaire to habitants in the vicinity of the investigated wind farms, questions were asked regarding their housing situation, living conditions, the bedroom's orientation towards wind turbines, noise disturbance, visual impact from wind turbines, economic incentive models, ownership structures, general attitudes about wind power, and more. The purpose was to provide a holistic basis for a future synthesis model for disturbance, and this project focused on the correlation between noise disturbance and visual impact from wind turbines, ownership structures and financial compensation models from the wind farm. The questionnaire was analysed with psychometric methods, including logistic regression and multivariate techniques as principal component regression. The results of the psychometric analyses showed a large spread in sensitivity to disturbances (both visual and acoustic) from wind power plants, but the most difficult elements could be identified for various factors in the questions, including e.g. audial and health factors, and the quality of financial compensation.