Master thesis Sustainable Energy Engineering Department of Energy Technology Wind farm noise impact in France: A proposition of acoustic model improvements for predicting energy production Date: 15/09/2014 Thesis number: EGI-2014-091MSC Project information Student: William Keller – KTH ID: 901009-T172
[email protected] Academic supervisor: Camille Hamon
[email protected] Academic examiner: Björn Palm
[email protected] Industry mentor: Gaël Millet
[email protected] Company details: ABO Wind 12 allée Duguay Trouin 44000 Nantes France Acknowledgement I would like to particularly thank Gaël Millet for being my tutor in the company during these 6 months of master thesis. The help of all my coworkers was also much appreciated and I would like to thank them all: Xavier Gray, Quentin Chiron, Alexander Fredj, Sebastien Bonnaval, François Rousseau, Boris Golotchoglou, Julie Boulo and Ombeline Accarion. Their availability, their enthusiasm and pedagogy made of this master thesis a rich professional, academic and personal experience, even creating new friendships. I also particularly thank Camille Hamon for his advices as supervisor during the writing of this master thesis and Björn Palm for being my examiner. i Abstract Despite all environmental and economic advantages of wind power, noise emission remains an issue for population acceptance. In France, the current noise emission regulation defines noise emergence level thresholds, leading to wind turbine curtailment. Great energy generation losses and thus lost revenues are at stake. This master thesis presents current acoustic campaigns conducted for the development of a wind power project in France and proposes acoustic model improvements to predict curtailment losses before the construction of the wind farm.