Terma provides wind turbine mitigation radar for NATS

Aarhus, Denmark - Wind turbines are great contributors in harvesting renewable energy. However, when grouped in large wind farms, they can have a significant effect on radars and specifically long-range Air Traffic Control Radars (ATC Radars) used for aviation. This issue has an impact on safe and reliable radar surveillance.

In late 2015 following several years of continued trials in UK and the U.S., Terma secured an initial contract with UK National Air Traffic Service (NATS) for radar surveillance of wind farms.

The first contract included a project near Liverpool where a SCANTER 4002 radar will monitor a wind farm with 19 land-based wind turbines and reduce the challenges created for the radar systems in the two nearby airports – Liverpool John Lennon and Chester Hawarden. The solution was delivered into service in February 2016.

Following the Merseyside project, Terma was selected to ensure effective surveillance of wind farms located near Newcastle International Airport and at Edinburgh Airport to eliminate the consequences of planned wind farms on the airports current ATC radars.

The three contracts follow a number of successful trials at UK airports that demonstrated that the Terma system was capable of safely mitigating the impact of turbines while detecting even small targets up to 40nm with good low level coverage.

The SCANTER 4002 transceiver is designed for detection and separation of small air targets and large surface targets like wind turbines. To achieve simultaneous good performance for air and surface detection, the SCANTER 4002 radar system is designed as a two-dimensional coherent X-band radar with pulse compression and advanced MTI processing, which provides enhanced detection of small air targets.

Terma has more than 60 years of experience in developing radars. Major airports around the world and coastal shores rely on Terma sensor technology, for unprecedented small land, sea, and air target detection in extreme weather conditions.