Wind farms interfere with airport radar
By David Pugliese, Canwest News Service
Wind turbines may be seen by governments across the land as a power source for the future, but a group of Canadian engineers could hold the key to ensuring that the clean energy system doesn't end up causing an aviation disaster.
As wind farms sprout up around the world, aviation specialists are raising concerns that the giant turbines create blackout zones for air traffic control radar.
The spinning blades are being detected by the radar, presenting false images or generating so much clutter on radar screens that controllers are losing track of aircraft as they fly near the wind farms.
To deal with the problem, NATS, the organization which provides air traffic control services to planes flying in Britain, and over the eastern part of the North Atlantic, has turned to engineers at Raytheon Canada in Waterloo, Ont., to come up with a fix.
"When you put hundreds or thousands of (these turbines) together, you can imagine what that does to the radar picture," said Tony Ponsford, a senior engineer at Raytheon Canada.
The solution the company's engineers think will work involves increasing the processing power of the air traffic control radar and coming up software that will allow the systems to cut through the interference caused by the turbines.
