How wind turbines are blinding the RAF’s vital North Sea radars

Hornsea Offshore Wind Project, Yorkshire, England
[image credit: nsenergybusiness.com]

Is the Government scoring a major own goal in pursuit of its fantasy climate goals? Hoped-for ‘energy security’ from wind power is looking further away than ever.
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Britain’s race to net zero risks blinding crucial radars protecting the UK from incursions over the North Sea amid fears that Russia will launch a campaign of sabotage.

Offshore wind farms blades interfere with radar signals and there are concerns that plans for a significant expansion of turbines in the North Sea by the end of the decade will cause problems for the Royal Air Force (RAF).

The Ministry of Defence has spent £18m over the past three years trying to stop wind farm blades from scrambling radar readings, the Telegraph can reveal.

However, none of this public spending has, so far, yielded a concrete solution to the problem.

Dangers in the North Sea are more than theoretical: a “ghost fleet” of Russian ships were spotted mapping communication and power cables in the area earlier this year, sparking fears that the Kremlin is preparing for a campaign of sabotage.

With ministers hoping to build another 35 gigawatts (GWs) of offshore wind capacity over the next seven years, national security must now compete with energy security.

Defence sources say the problem lies in how wind turbine blades reflect the electromagnetic pulses used by RAF radars to detect aircraft.

These so-called “primary radar” pulses are reflected by aeroplanes, sending a signal back to aerials housed in giant ‘golf ball’ domes around the UK’s coastline that register their position.

However, metal turbine blades also reflect radar pulses, generating false returns that can flood operators’ screens with nonsense information.

A serving RAF officer explains: “If you have three blades on one turbine, that’s three false reflections. Imagine you then put up 10 or 20 turbines.”

Full article here.