June 23,
2008: Large, electricity generating, wind
mills screw up radar reception, and that is putting many wind farm (groups of
electricity producing windmills) plans on hold.
Wind farms are becoming a cost effective way to create electricity,
partly because of improvements in technology, but largely because of the rising
price of oil. In the next few years, wind will be cheaper than coal or oil, and
quicker to get on line than nuclear. While wind only produces about one percent
of U.S. electricity now, that could rise to 20 percent or more in the next 25
years. But first, the elderly radars that equip the air traffic control system
in the United States will have to be replaced. The government has resisted
doing so, because of the expense, and the risk of screwing it up (always a bog
possibility for projects like this, and really bad news for politicians.)
More
modern radars use software and faster processing power that filter out the
interference generated by those swirling metal windmill blades. Most military
radars are already equipped to do that, but that's because ships and aircraft
are so likely to encounter these windmills, wither offshore, on ridge lines or
on the Great Plains of the American Midwest.
