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Metadata: 2013, National Physical Laboratory, Greater Gabbard, Modelling of Underwater Noise
Abstract:
The Food and Environment Protection Act (FEPA) Licence (33097/07/0) for the Greater Gabbard Offshore Wind Farm (GGOWF) required the subsea noise during the operational phase of the wind farm to be measured to assess ‘various frequencies across the sound spectrum at a selection of locations immediately (adjacent to), within and outside the array at varying distances’. The full wording of licence condition 9.9 is stated below: ‘The Licence Holder must make provision during the construction phase of the wind farm to install facilities to enable subsea noise and vibration from the turbines to be assessed and monitored during the operational phase of the wind farm. Before completion of the construction phase the Licence Holder must specify how it proposes to measure subsea noise and vibrations to the Licensing Authority in order to fulfil the monitoring requirement outlined in Annex 1 attached to this Licence. The specification must include assessment of various frequencies across the sound spectrum at a selection of locations immediately, within and outside the array at varying distances.’ Although the licence condition sates ‘monitoring’ as a requirement, in situ measurements alone may not necessarily result in an increase of understanding of the potential noise resulting from GGOWF, compared with background or ambient noise in the area. Evidence from the Gunfleet Sands offshore wind farm (Nedwell et al., 2011) suggests that the type of wind turbine operating at GGOWF is not very ‘noisy’ compared with typical coastal ambient noise. This may particularly be the case around the GGOWF site where the density of surface vessel activity is relatively high. This report describes work carried out by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), on behalf of Greater Gabbard Offshore Winds Limited, to assess the likely noise levels resulting from operation of the entire GGOWF, with a methodology that is considered most appropriate to address the underlying requirements of the relevant licence condition.
Data holder:
The Crown Estate
| Other details | ||
| Internal code | Internally assigned metadata identifier | 19270 |
| Title | The title is used to provide a brief and precise description of the dataset such as 'Date', 'Originating organisation/programme', 'Location' and 'Type of survey'. All acronyms and abbreviations should be reproduced in full. | 2013, National Physical Laboratory, Greater Gabbard, Modelling of Underwater Noise |
| Alternative title | The purpose of alternative title is to record any additional names by which the dataset may be known. | Modelling of Underwater Noise |
| File Identifier | The File Identifier is a code, preferably a GUID, that is globally unique and remains with the same metadata record even if the record is edited or transferred between portals or tools. | 8c59bf28-c814-401b-8389-01ec414dffc3 |
| Resource Identifier | This is the code assigned by the data owner. | TCE-440 |
| Resource type | The resource type will likely be a dataset but could also be a series (collection of datasets with a common specification) or a service. | series |
| Start date | This describes the date the resource starts. This may only be the year if month and day are not known | 2013-04-18 |
| End date | This describes the date the resource ends. This may only be the year if month and day are not known | 2013-05-20 |
| Frequency of updates | This describes the frequency with which the resource is modified or updated i.e. a monitoring programme that samples once per year has a frequency that is described as 'annually'. | asNeeded |
| Abstract | The abstract provides a clear and brief statement of the content of the resource. | The Food and Environment Protection Act (FEPA) Licence (33097/07/0) for the Greater Gabbard Offshore Wind Farm (GGOWF) required the subsea noise during the operational phase of the wind farm to be measured to assess ‘various frequencies across the sound spectrum at a selection of locations immediately (adjacent to), within and outside the array at varying distances’. The full wording of licence condition 9.9 is stated below: ‘The Licence Holder must make provision during the construction phase of the wind farm to install facilities to enable subsea noise and vibration from the turbines to be assessed and monitored during the operational phase of the wind farm. Before completion of the construction phase the Licence Holder must specify how it proposes to measure subsea noise and vibrations to the Licensing Authority in order to fulfil the monitoring requirement outlined in Annex 1 attached to this Licence. The specification must include assessment of various frequencies across the sound spectrum at a selection of locations immediately, within and outside the array at varying distances.’ Although the licence condition sates ‘monitoring’ as a requirement, in situ measurements alone may not necessarily result in an increase of understanding of the potential noise resulting from GGOWF, compared with background or ambient noise in the area. Evidence from the Gunfleet Sands offshore wind farm (Nedwell et al., 2011) suggests that the type of wind turbine operating at GGOWF is not very ‘noisy’ compared with typical coastal ambient noise. This may particularly be the case around the GGOWF site where the density of surface vessel activity is relatively high. This report describes work carried out by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), on behalf of Greater Gabbard Offshore Winds Limited, to assess the likely noise levels resulting from operation of the entire GGOWF, with a methodology that is considered most appropriate to address the underlying requirements of the relevant licence condition. |
| Lineage | Lineage includes the background information, history of the sources of data, data quality statements and methods. | To assess the underwater noise levels resulting from an operational wind farm, the single turbine source level was used as an input to an energy flux density underwater acoustic propagation model (based on Weston, 1976) for 140 turbine locations, each of which was placed on a grid measuring approximately 40 km by 40 km. For each turbine, each third octave band between 40 Hz and 1 kHz was propagated using a fully numerical, range dependent, propagation model which accounts for geometrical spreading and frequency dependent absorption (using Thorpe (1967)), surface scattering and seabed reflections. Each turbine grid used one second bathymetry data based on the lowest astronomical tide (LAT) and acoustic sediment data (Lurton, 2003), specific to each turbine location and based on the predominant sediment type identified in the area from the pre-lay survey (Gardline, 2009). This resulted in 140 grids, allowing the received level at each point to be incoherently summed to provide a map of the overall noise level resulting from 140 operating wind turbines. LAT was chosen following a comparison between LAT and the highest astronomical tide (HAT) to investigate the effect on propagation range. Whilst HAT normally results in the largest propagation ranges when considering receptors at a significant distance from the source, this is not always the case close to the source. At distances closer to the source, the shallow water channel can trap the acoustic energy, thus resulting in higher levels. Once the sound has propagated further from the source, the interactions with the seabed tend to dominate, which usually results in the reduced propagation ranges in the shallower water. However, for GGOWF, the turbine separation (approximately 1,000 m or less in most cases) is such that the highest received level reaching the neighbouring turbine occurs at LAT, and therefore results in the highest overall noise level within the wind farm array. A few kilometres beyond the wind farm boundary, the highest level may well occur at highest astronomical tide but at this range it would generally be within the expected ambient noise. |
| Related keywords | ||
| Keyword | General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Acoustic noise in the water column |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Sound velocity and travel time in the water column | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Operation and Maintenance | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Renewable Energy Lease area | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Energy resources | |
| Geographical coverage | ||
| North | The northern-most limit of the data resource in decimal degrees | 51.981616 |
| East | The eastern-most limit of the data resource in decimal degrees | 2.023934 |
| South | The southern-most limit of the data resource in decimal degrees | 51.730637 |
| West | The western-most limit of the data resource in decimal degrees | 1.831959 |
| Responsible organisations | ||
| Role | The point of contact is person or organisation with responsibility for the creation and maintenance of the metadata for the resource. | pointOfContact |
| Organisation name | SSE Renewables | |
| Phone | +44 (0)141 226 8916 | |
| info@sserenewables.com | ||
| Role | The custodian is the person or organisation that accepts responsibility for the resource and ensures appropriate care and maintenance. If a dataset has been lodged with a Data Archive Centre for maintenance then this organisation is be entered here. | custodian |
| Organisation name | The Crown Estate | |
| Phone | +44 020 7851 5000 | |
| enquiries@thecrownestate.co.uk | ||
| Role | The originator is the person or organisation who created, collected or produced the resource. | originator |
| Organisation name | National Physical Laboratory | |
| Individual name | Dr Pete Theobald | |
| Phone | +44 (0)20 8943 6888 | |
| pete.theobald@npl.co.uk | ||
| Role | The distributor is the person or organisation that distributes the resource. | distributor |
| Organisation name | The Crown Estate | |
| Phone | +44 020 7851 5000 | |
| enquiries@thecrownestate.co.uk | ||
| Role | The owner is the person or organisation that owns the resource. | owner |
| Organisation name | SSE Renewables | |
| caroline.thomson@sse.com | ||
| Resource locators | ||
| Locator URL | Web address (URL) that links to the resource | https://www.marinedataexchange.co.uk/details/TCE-440/summary |
| Web address (URL) that links to the resource | https://www.marinedataexchange.co.uk | |
| Dataset constraints | ||
| 20.1 Limitations on Public Access - Access constraints | This states `otherRestrictions` from ISO vocabulary RestrictionCode and is an INSPIRE/GEMINI requirement. | otherRestrictions |
| 20.2 Limitations on Public Access - Other constraints | There will be no limitations when published on the Marine Data Exchange | |
| 21.1 Conditions for Access and Use - Use constraints | This states `otherRestrictions` from ISO vocabulary RestrictionCode and is an INSPIRE/GEMINI requirement. | otherRestrictions |
| 21.2 Conditions for Access and Use - Other constraints | This states any constraints on use of the data. Multiple conditions can be recorded for different parts of the data resource. If no conditions apply, then `No condtions apply` is recorded. This uses free text. | Data Must be used in accordance to the Marine Data Exchange's Terms of Use: https://www.marinedataexchange.co.uk/content/info/terms-of-use |
| Version info | ||
| Date of publication | The publication date of the resource or if previously unpublished the date that the resource was made publicly available via the MEDIN network. | 2021-05-17 |
| Harvest date | The date which this record has been (re)harvested from the provider. | 2026-04-19 |
| Metadata date | The date when the content of this metadata record was last updated. | 2026-03-27 |
| Metadata standard name | The name of the metadata standard used to create this metadata | MEDIN |
| Metadata standard version | The version of the MEDIN Discovery Metadata Standard used to create the metadata record | 3.1.2 |