Stealth Wind Turbines Avoid Erasing Aircraft From Radar

Stealth Blades Just turbine blades in the wind QinetiQ

Wind turbines can be a radar operator's worst nightmare. By scrambling radar waves as blades spin faster or slower, large wind farms are sometimes capable of erasing airplanes from radar screens completely. But a Danish wind turbine company and a UK defense contractor may have found a solution by unveiling the first "stealth" wind-turbine blade last month.

Danish company Vestas and UK contractor QinetiQ constructed the wind turbines with radar-absorbing materials that included glass-reinforced epoxy and plastic foam, not the concept used in stealth aircraft. That produced a smaller signature during testing of a wind turbine with two stealth blades.

Related Articles

	Huge Texas Wind Farm's Turbines Will Be Made in China
	General Electric Gives Gearless Wind Turbines a Big Boost
	Deep-Water Wind: World's First Floating Wind Turbine Launched

Tags

Technology, Jeremy Hsu, blades, QinetiQ, Raytheon, stealth, stealth aircraft, Vestas, wind farms, wind power, wind turbines

Such stealth technology may help wind farms avoid problems with short-wave radar. But a Homeland Security study last year found that the technology still falls short in preventing interference with long-wavelength L-band radars used by U.S. air security. A Vestas representative countered the study by telling Technology Review that the company has also demonstrated an L-band radar absorber.

Concerns over aviation radar interference have already held up development of many wind farms worldwide, including a 130-turbine farm in Massachusett's Nantucket Sound. They also compelled the UK government to join Raytheon Canada in trying to modify air-traffic control systems so that they can recognize and ignore wind farm radar signatures.

Still, a final solution may only arrive when older radar systems get upgraded and become more capable of dealing with wind turbine signatures.

[via Technology Review]