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Wind Farms Can Interfere With Doppler Radar
T Murphy writes "Wind farms can appear like storms or tornadoes on Doppler radar when placed too close to the radar. Tornado alley is a good area for wind farms, and good terrain for the turbines is also ideal for Doppler radar. With many new farms being constructed, the problem is growing. A false tornado warning was issued in Kansas by a computer, although canceled by a meteorologist aware of the problem — there are fears that false positives will grow. Worse would be a tornado ignored as a wind turbine. While meteorologists are trying to work with wind farm owners to shut off the turbines during bad weather, they have no control over the placement or operation of the turbines. Efforts are being made to improve detection technology to avoid further problems."
The problem is likely that the technology is very simple and as a result -- imprecise.
To "naive" persons like you and I, we may say it's too small or well couldn't you just program in that a vortex seen at this height (100m is quite a bit lower than where most funnel clouds are formed, cumulonimbus clouds are at 2000 ft), but it may be technically very difficult to distinguish in such a way. I've never worked with the data they gather so I can't speak expertly, but I'd imagine if it were a true 3 dimensional scan, you'd be able to easily determine the height and size of an anomaly and discount it or mark it way down on the danger scale, but that could be totally unreasonable.
Any meteorologists around?
If only the wind turbines were on stationary towers, then they might be able to map them, and use such a map to inform their interpretation of the radar data.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Wind speeds above the maximum design speed will tear the mechanical gearing apart - that is if the wind surfaces don't rip off first.
Most wind turbines already automatically lock themselves when wind speeds exceed certain design specifications to protect themselves from damage.
I'm not sure that you realize the limitations of the radar systems themselves.
The nexrad doppler radar system uses systems designed in the early-mid 80's. Three meter resolution? Try 1km during the best situations.
My question is: how do you "shut down" a wind farm? The wind blows, the windmills turn.
It's called a brake.
This is what slashdot is for, making you aware of complicated technology which you couldn't possibly have heard of from other sources ;-)
You can't take the sky from me...
So a Fox affiliate employee took the opportunity to...
1) Downplay some senseless and sensationalist bit of fear-mongering...
2) While saying something nice about a green technology that suffers from a lot of NIMBYism...
3) And he based it all on solid science and some common sense?
He was fired immediately after, right?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").