Fears of Radar Interference Threaten Oregon Wind Farm, but Solutions Exist

Wind turbines can reach hundreds of feet into the air, but the effects of their spinning blades can extend much farther than that.

In a rehashing of a continuing concern, the Pentagon and the Federal Aviation Administration are threatening to block the construction of what would be the country’s largest wind farm because of a potential for the turbines to interfere with nearby radar systems’ ability to track airplanes.

Caithness Energy is ready to start construction on the Shepherds Flat wind farm along the Columbia River Gorge in northeastern Oregon; it would have a capacity of up 909 megawatts. In spite of the project having been in development for several years, objections have been raised only now regarding a radar system used by the Air Force in Fossil, Ore., about 70 miles from the wind farm site.

At the root of the problem is the radar signature created by a spinning turbine blade. Radar systems are designed to distinguish between things that move and things that don’t — say, an airplane versus the mountain behind it — so when an airplane flies in the same general vicinity as the many spinning blades on a wind farm, the airplane might disappear in the “clutter” created by the turbines’ radar signature.

“Because this is an older radar it doesn’t have a modern computer system to help it filter these things out,” said Gary Seifert, an expert on wind turbines and radar at the Idaho National Laboratory.

“The older radars can only handle so much of that clutter or noise before they start detuning their performance. So if you get too many wind turbines in an area then that portion of the radar has a little less sensitivity.”

Multiple Mitigation Strategies

The conflict between wind turbines and radar is not a new one. The Sierra Club filed a lawsuit in 2006 arguing that the holds on wind farms due to military radar concerns were in effect halting the entire industry, and speaking at a conference earlier this year Seifert cited American Wind Energy Association data indicating that more than 9,000 MW of wind power have been held up, deferred or abandoned due to radar issues.

There is little debate that wind turbines can in fact interfere with radar’s ability to see planes. The real question, Seifert told SolveClimate, is whether small gaps in a radar’s vision are really all that important.

“If the plane is flying along, and you see him for 50 miles, and he disappears for a couple of miles and then is back on the screen again, did you lose your ability to do your job if that area is out in the middle of the desert and its not by anything that matters?”

He added that location is obviously quite important — if the turbines in question are next to a military base, or the border of the country, for example, “then the equation is completely different than if you’re out in the middle of Oregon. Those are questions that only the military can answer.”

And even if the answers to those questions are unequivocal and the military needs no gaps at all in its radar systems, solutions to the problem are plentiful.

First, newer radar systems, such as the Lockheed Martin TPS-77 recently purchased by the wind-friendly British government, have the ability to see through the turbine clutter.

“It can look for airplanes right down to about 500 feet of turbines without any interference from the turbines,” Seifert said. He added, though, that price tags on the order of $20 to $30 million make this an unlikely mitigation option for the issues in Oregon.