Windfarms

While the growth of onshore windfarms may have slowed, offshore developments are rising – and each one has the potential to interfere with radar systems used by air traffic controllers. National civil aviation authorities are responsible for the safe transit of aircraft through their airspace and require all wind farm developers to determine whether their turbines’ will impact radio communications before they are built.

Wind farm developers need to manage the impact of turbines on civil and military aviation infrastructure. This includes evaluating the impact on radars and surrounding telecommunication services. With accurate planning and modelling, the impact on air traffic control systems in the proximity of a wind farm can be mitigated.

HTZ Communications offers dedicated features for windfarm mitigation studies including:

• Windfarm mitigation analysis – identifying whether a development is detected and adversely affects aeronautical traffic radars;
• Windfarm interference maps (C/I) – identifying any obstructions caused by the wind turbine and its impact on the communication networks’ coverage;
• Clearance analysis – identifying the potential interaction between weather radars and wind turbines to understand the impact of windfarm masks, reflections from buildings, turbines/blades on the weather radars;
• MW links assessment – pre-planning application support to analyse impact of wind turbine on MW links;
• Identifies three interference criteria - including near-field zone, diffraction and signal reflection.