windturbinejapan.jpgIn the Buena Vista town trustee debates, it was difficult not to notice the distrust of wind generation as a viable energy solution in town. Wind consistency and strength issues aside, one of the most obvious hurdles would be the noise factor.

Concerns with wind turbine noise are not confined to cities and towns. Search wind turbine noise in YouTube and you’ll find videos like this one, as well as others on the other side of the argument. These are from residents who are located near the giant wind farms that are springing up across the world to satisfy our ever growing demand for energy.

So what do we do? Wind seems like a truly viable form of renewable energy that is clean and abundant. How do we work on noise reduction in more populated areas.

One answer comes from a German collective that is working on a device that will cancel the noise with the exact opposite wavelength of noise.

“These systems react autonomously to any change in frequency and damp the noise – regardless of how fast the wind generator is turning,” says Illgen. The key components of this system are piezo actuators. These devices convert electric current into mechanical motion and generate “negative vibrations”, or a kind of anti-noise that precisely counteracts the vibrations of the wind turbine and cancels them out. - from an article on physorg.

Perhaps a step in the trek to answering some noisy questions about wind.

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