Wind Farms Disturbing Radar?

[+Fates 63]

 

Emerging technology can ease the problem of wind farms causing interference with air-traffic control systems. But deployment of that technology in the U.S. has been slowed by questions over authority and cost.

 

Since 2006, radar maker Raytheon and National Air Traffic Services, which provides air traffic control in the U.K., have been working on a project to upgrade air traffic radar so it can distinguish between aircraft and wind turbines' spinning blades. Concerns over the disturbances turbines can cause on air traffic control systems are already stunting the growth of wind power: radar and wind turbines conflicts derailed nearly as much as the total amount of installed wind power capacity in the U.S. last year.

 

In the test, due for completion next spring, Raytheon and NATS are seeking to certify a combination of wind turbine mitigation techniques, including upgrading radar hardware and changing signal-processing algorithms.

 

"When you start putting a set of turbines across an area, what it looks like to the radar is a whole great field of moving objects," said Peter Drake, Raytheon's technical director for Digital Airport Surveillance Radar, the radar system used for airport terminals. "It's a very real problem."

 

 

Read more: http://news.cnet.com...l#ixzz0ytQqFigP

[+Erik 1,812]

Luckily the chances of a wind turbine squawking an ident have been fairly rare.

 

:Controller: Unknown windmill north east of the field, Fairbanks Approach, IFR cancelled, contact tower on one one two point niner zero, good day.

[+GrinchWSLG 24]

They show up as primary targets only, but a primary target can be any moving object at any altitude, so it can be a bit disconcerting to a controller. As a rule, the MTI Gate (moving target indicator) cancels out most non airplane objects simply based on the fact they don't move fast enough. Then the angle of the antenna itself accounts for things like cars on the freeway. I imagine a wind farm would show up on my scope like a whole block of diamond shaped primary targets.

 

I've never seen a primary only that was an aircraft, aside from a few that just departed and forgot to turn their squawk on, but I have seen formations of birds show up. In a radar only environment, where you can't look out the window and use your Mk 1's to account for the target, you should always call traffic on any primary that sticks around for more than a few sweeps. After my basic radar training course sim checkride, in which I called traffic on a primary only target, my evaluator told me of two instances where controllers had called traffic on primaries, and they turned out to be actual aircraft that were narrowly avoided. Apparently I was the first student he'd ever watched that called traffic on them, as it wasn't something that was taught in that course.

[Mikeone 4]

qinetiq along with a dansih turbine manufacurer are developing what could be said as a 'stealth' wind turbine, s unique design and coating to the blades, to minimise the effect they have to radar, not completely stealth but with a unique radar return for easy identification for radar and therefore minimise the risk of collission or negate the potential threats using them as a shield.

[Derk 265]

Wonder about the effect of an aam on a windmill.........

 

Hou doe,

 

Derk

[JediMaster 451]

Funny a B-1B was used in the pic as I was just imagining TF flight into a windmill farm could ruin their day PDQ. Anyway, helo rotor blades cause the same thing on radars, but they're usually edge-on and not perpendicular to the radars so it's less of an issue.