Dufferin Wind Farm

Location: Dufferin County, Ontario
Owner/Operator: Dufferin Wind Power

The Dufferin Wind Farm consist of 49 General Electric wind turbines spanning over 6000 acres in Dufferin County, Ontario. The wind farm has the capacity to generate 91.4 MW of power annually, enough electricity to power between 22,500 and 30,000 households when the wind is blowing.

HGC was retained by Dufferin Wind Power Inc. to assist in fulfilling certain requirements of the Renewable Energy Approval (“REA”), issued to the site by the Ontario Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks (“MECP”). The REA required sound power testing of select wind turbines (Emission Audit), sound level monitoring at several locations near the wind farm (Immission Audit), and sound power testing of the project transformer station.

Wind Turbine Sound Power Testing (Emission Audit)

Testing was conducted in accordance with the International Electrotechnical Commission 61400-11-2018 (Edition 3.1) Wind turbine generator systems – Part 11: Acoustic noise measurement techniques to determine the sound power output of several General Electric wind turbine generators. To conduct the IEC 61400-11 testing, HGC employed a sophisticated RoBin measurement system developed by Wolfel. This system provides the benefit of wireless communications between the 10 m height anemometer, the sound level analyser, and the turbine data collection system, providing real time feedback on the status of the measurements. Data is collected and binned automatically, with user input identifying the collected data as ambient sound, interfering sound, or turbine sound, minimizing lost data. The principal advantage of a system capable of real time analysis, is that HGC will know in the field when the required data points are collected and have immediate feedback if there are problems with any of the data sources, eliminating unnecessary site time or repeated test visits.

Acoustic Audit at Nearby Receptor Locations (Immission Audit)

An acoustic audit of the sound emissions of the facility was conducted in accordance with the MECP Compliance Protocol for Wind Turbine Noise, which provides a methodology for determining the noise contribution of the wind facility at nearby noise-sensitive receptors.

An automated sound level monitoring station was deployed at each receptor location to collect the data required by the Compliance Protocol. Wind speed and direction were also recorded at each receptor location. All instruments deployed by HGC were remotely accessible to allow periodic validation of the collected data, monitor the operator of the equipment, and to reduce the number of site visits required.

Transformer Sound Power Testing

HGC performed acoustic measurements of a 110 MVA electrical power transformer, as required by the REA. The measurements were conducted in accordance with the methods described in C57.12.90 – IEEE Standard Test Code for Liquid-Immersed Distribution, Power, and Regulating Transformers and ISO 9614-1 – Determination of Sound Power Levels of Noise Sources Using Sound Intensity – Part 1: Measurement at Discrete Points, using sophisticated sound intensity measurement instrumentation.

Acoustical consulting services delivered:

• ISO 17025 accredited sound power testing of several wind turbine generators in accordance with the IEC 61400-11 standard
• Acoustic Audit (Immission) of the noise contribution of the wind farm at nearby noise-sensitive receptors in accordance with MECP Compliance Protocol for Wind Turbine Noise
• Sound power measurements of a transformer using IEEE C57.12.90 and ISO 9614-1