Should We Worry About Wind Farms And The Marines?

Today's County Compass reports a brouhaha resulting from a request by representatives of Cherry Point MCAS to appear before a joint session of the Pamlico County Board of Commissioners to discuss wind farms. Commissioner Delamar, who has supported wind farms in Pamlico County, voted against the meeting. His was the only vote against it.

I plan to attend the meeting. I hope to hear from the Cherry Point representatives an informative discussion examining potential problems, including a technical explanation, along with proposed solutions. I want to see some empirical data backed by research. I would hope that an expert from NRL might appear. If the proposed solution is not to have wind farms in Pamlico County, I will be very disappointed.

One commissioner is quoted as saying "the Marine Corps deserve our respect just based on who they are." I share that commissioner's high regard for the marines. At the same time, I would hope that our marines are bending every effort to insure that we can share the land, sea and air space of Eastern North Carolina without precluding other future economic development in the region.

By the way, we should all recognize that effective alternate energy sources to replace the burning of fossil fuels is an urgent national security priority. In fact, the Department of the Navy (including the marines) has taken the lead in DOD in fostering alternate energy development.

I gather that the marines share a concern of a number of government agencies that wind farms present a particular challenge to radars, including air search and air control radars, including doppler radars for meteorology. The fundamental concern is radar clutter.

Clutter has been a major challenge for radar designers from the earliest days. Dealing with clutter has generated an alphabet soup of anti-clutter measures: STC, AGC, FTC, IAGC, MTI, frequency agility, circular polarization, Moving Target Detector, Pulse-Doppler Systems, and on and on. Clutter presents some of the same challenges as are presented by electronic and mechanical jamming.

Solving particular problems of clutter from wind farms may not be trivial, but is certainly surmountable.

The following is an executive summary of a 2008 report by The MITRE Corporation, one of our premier defense contractors with experience in this area.

Wind Farms And Radar

January 2008

The MITRE Corporation


1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

"Wind farms interfere with radar. This interference has led the FAA,
the DHS, and the DOD to contest many proposed wind turbines in the line
of sight of radar, stalling development of several thousands of MW of wind
energy. A large number of such denials is a serious impediment to the nation’s
mandated growth of sustainable energy.

"There is no fundamental physical constraint that prohibits the accu-
rate detection of aircraft and weather patterns around wind farms. On the
other hand, the nation’s aging long range radar infrastructure significantly
increases the challenge of distinguishing wind farm signatures from airplanes
or weather.

"Progress forward requires the development of mitigation measures, and
quantitative evaluation tools and metrics to determine when a wind farm
poses a sufficient threat to a radar installation for corrective action to be
taken. Mitigation measures may include modifications to wind farms (such
as methods to reduce radar cross section; and telemetry from wind farms to
radar), as well as modifications to radar (such as improvements in processing;
radar design modifications; radar replacement; and the use of gap fillers in
radar coverage).

"There is great potential for the mitigation procedures, though there
is currently no source of funding to test how proposed mitigations work in
practice. In general, the government and industry should cooperate to find
methods for funding studies of technical mitigations. NOAA has an excellent
research plan, but no adequate funding to carry it out.

"Once the potential for different mitigations are understood, we see no
scientific hurdle for constructing regulations that are technically based and
simple to understand and implement, with a single government entity tak-
ing responsibility for overseeing the process. In individual cases, the best
solution might be to replace the aging radar station with modern and flexi-
ble equipment that is more able to separate wind farm clutter from aircraft.
This is a win-win situation for national security, both improving our radar
infrastructure and promoting the growth of sustainable energy.

"Regulatory changes for air traffic could make considerable impact on
the problem. For example, the government could consider mandating that
the air space up to some reasonable altitude above an air-security radar
with potential turbine interference be a controlled space, with transponders
required for all aircraft flying in that space. This would both solve the
problem of radar interference over critical wind farms and would provide a
direct way to identify bad actors, flying without transponders.

"Current circumstances provide an interesting opportunity for improving
the aging radar infrastructure of the United States, by replacing radar that
inhibits the growth of wind farms with new, more flexible and more capable
systems, especially digital radar hardware and modern computing power.
Such improvements could significantly increase the security of U.S. airspace."

For what it's worth, in my opinion the Marine Corps needs to take the lead in getting this project budgeted. FAA, DHS, Air Force, Navy, DOD and perhaps some other agencies should chip in.

This is not an optional program. We urgently need more renewable energy sources. The cost of failure to control global warming and allowing the sea level to rise is incalculable. It is already threatening Norfolk, VA. Projected sea level rise of one meter later in this century will make my home unlivable - and those of many other Pamlico County residents as well. One meter this century may well be an underestimate.

There is no single silver bullet. We need to explore every avenue.

Not just for the residents of Eastern North Carolina, but for the marines as well.