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Published online 25 June 2008 | Nature 453, 1156 (2008) | doi:10.1038/4531156f

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Radar and wind farms should coexist, say advisers

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  • Projects like CASA (http://www.casa.umass.edu/) will likely lead the way in this. The venerable WSR-88D is currently on the road to replacement with phased-array antenna systems and dual-doppler dual polarization schemes that promise to provide significantly better data for sensing hydrometeors. The inherent problem here, though, is that modern weather radars are designed to look at the relative motion and doppler signature of a target. Wind turbine blades move. The velocity signature imparted to a reflected signal will tell the radar that. Some degree of electronic masking and desensitization will be possible in radar software updates, much as we see terrain masking now, but masking doppler signatures is problemmatical in that you could well lose sensitivity throughout the entire scan range of the radar station, and not just at the windfarm. Adaptive sensors as proposed by CASA show promise in that they could be local enough (cellularized) to restrict doppler interference solely to that region while retaining their resolution and sensitivity throughout the rest of the sensor region of interest.

    • 25 Jun, 2008
    • Posted by: Gerald Creager