Internoise is the world’s premier research conference for acousticians. The 2015 meeting is being held right now in San Francisco. Buried among the hundreds of papers is one that you could easily take as a prank: Infrasound and low-frequency noise measurements at a solar plant. The paper is by Mike Greene, an acoustician working for the Dudek company in San Juan Capistrano, California.
Greene conducted the environmental review for two proposed concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) solar energy facilities, which use lenses and curved mirrors to focus large areas of sunlight onto solar cells. Greene explains in his paper that following “comments from a private organization”, it became necessary for the review to investigate:
a concern that the CPV electric generation systems and associated inverters and transformers could produce high levels of infrasound and low frequency noise (ILFN).
The measurements were conducted at an existing solar energy farm in Southern California.
Infrasound and low frequency noise is generally inaudible unless it occurs at very high-pressure levels of more than 85 decibels on the G-weighted sound scale (dBG). This is the audibility threshold standard adopted by the Danish environmental protection agency.
We are all surrounded by inaudible infrasound that is produced by a wide diversity of sources from our own heartbeat and breathing, walking, wind and storms, the sea, traffic, and almost all mechanical equipment (stereos, car motors, ceiling fans, air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines). We can hear these sources, but it’s not the infrasound we hear.
Greene conducted the environmental review for two proposed concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) solar energy facilities, which use lenses and curved mirrors to focus large areas of sunlight onto solar cells. Greene explains in his paper that following “comments from a private organization”, it became necessary for the review to investigate:
a concern that the CPV electric generation systems and associated inverters and transformers could produce high levels of infrasound and low frequency noise (ILFN).
The measurements were conducted at an existing solar energy farm in Southern California.
Infrasound and low frequency noise is generally inaudible unless it occurs at very high-pressure levels of more than 85 decibels on the G-weighted sound scale (dBG). This is the audibility threshold standard adopted by the Danish environmental protection agency.
We are all surrounded by inaudible infrasound that is produced by a wide diversity of sources from our own heartbeat and breathing, walking, wind and storms, the sea, traffic, and almost all mechanical equipment (stereos, car motors, ceiling fans, air conditioners, refrigerators, washing machines). We can hear these sources, but it’s not the infrasound we hear.
No comments:
Post a Comment