Raytheon to help Brits with radar, wind power issues By Chris Madison

"We are developing this much-needed technology with NATS to eliminate potential radar blackout zones near wind farms and enable the U.K. to continue its progress in developing safe, renewable energy resources," said Andy Zogg, Raytheon Network Centric Systems vice president of Command and Control Systems. "This contract award is a strong endorsement of our leap-ahead technology and will enable our customer to move forward with its greening of energy production."

In the United States, American Wind Energy Association has been engaged with the U.S. Defense Department and the Federal Aviation Administration to find ways to minimize the impact of turbines on radar. U.S. officials recently met with their British counterparts in Washington as a first step toward information sharing.

Besides the computer modeling apprach that is the subject of the Raytheon contract, more research is needed into upgrades of radar systems so that they better detect and filter radar returns from wind turbines, stealth-like coatings for wind turbine blades (a successful test just concluded in the UK), and changes to turbine lay out to reduce radar returns.

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