Raytheon has been awarded a contract by UK's NATS (National Air Traffic Services) to develop the technology that will minimize the impact of wind turbines on radar signals. The issues has been significant enough in the past months to have caused many offshore wind energy projects to be put on hold until a solution has been found. The UK is not the only country that has identified the problem, as Germany has also had the same problem a while back, as we reported.

Raytheon is to conduct software modeling and field trials of the technology. The core of the problem is that turbines at wind farms create a Doppler effect as their rotors spin. This causes a "black out" zone on the radar screens, which degrades the usefulness of the system.

The amount awarded to the company is USD 6.5 million, and will result in development and testing of advanced mitigation algorithms within Raytheon's S-band approach and L-band en route primary surveillance radars. The company will also develop additional components that will allow easier improvement to the system in the future. Testing will be done in the UK and the Netherlands.

[source: Raytheon]