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Wind Farms Can Interfere With Doppler Radar

Posted by timothy on from the whiteout-on-the-right-parts-of-the-screen dept.

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."

1 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. The REAL problem here... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I work for NWS. False alarms are rare. The Mets know where the farms are and the signals are always there. While there is a chance of a mistake in the heat of battle - the duty Mets are usually overloaded with information during a convective event - they don't happen that often. A bigger issue is a farm degrades the performance of the radar around the farm. In other words, if there is weather right around the farm, you can't see it for noise.

    Here the real threat.

    Lawyers for wind farms who know they have a nimby problem know that one of the arguments will be the interference problem. The lawyers have learned that NWS/DOD/FAA (the radars are a tri-agency project) usually leased the land for the radars in the late 1980s/early 1990's for either 20 or 25 years, so the leases are coming up for renewal.

    In several recent cases, NWS/DOD/FAA have gone to the land holder to renew the lease only to find out the wind project has already leased the land for twenty years at 5x the rate of the government lease and get a notice the radar needs to be moved.

    Now moving a WSR-88D costs upwards of a million bucks. They are VERY large and engineering studies have to be conducted to locate a good location ... usually as high up as possible (but not too high), in a place that has as few places were the beam is blocked by terrain, where power and limited bandwidth can be had, etc. The studies done in the 1980's usually found that sweet spot, but it has just been taken away.

    So the radar could end up being moved at high expense to a not as good location. While the radar is down (there aren't any spares), coverage may not be available.