Significance and Mitigation of Wind Turbine Clutter for the WSR-88D Network
Renewable energy production is becoming increasing important due in part to economic,
political, and environmental concerns. Wind power has proven to be an affordable option
and numerous international companies are now involved in its development.
Updates
Recent Masters Thesis
Trip for Dodge City
Members of the ARRC Wind Turbine Team recently made a trip up to Dodge City, KS.
Trip for Great Falls
Members of the ARRC Wind Turbine Team recently made another trip to Great Falls, MT.
Thrust of This Study
This study spans two distinct thrust areas:
The proposed two thrust areas will attack this significant problem from both the meteorological and engineering perspectives providing a road map for activities related to the mitigation of WTC over the coming years.
- Climatology of the extent and significance of Wind Turbine Clutter
- Adaptive filtering for mitigation of Wind Turbine Clutter
Although anecdotal evidence
exists on the effect of WTC on Doppler radar, no in-depth studies are available, especially
related to weather radar. Using GIS and other climatological tools, geographical surveys will
be conducted on the relation of WSR-88D coverage to the possible location of future wind
farms, for example. Other logical connections will also be made between WTC intensity
and atmospheric conditions such as temperature inversions, etc.
This thrust area will
focus on signal processing methods to mitigate WTC assuming growth of the wind-power
industry over the coming years. Taking advantage of the Open RDA (ORDA) upgrade to
the WSR-88D network, it will be possible to develop adaptive digital filters with the intent of
significantly attenuating the WTC signal allowing unimpeded weather observations.
The proposed two thrust areas will attack this significant problem from both the meteorological and engineering perspectives providing a road map for activities related to the mitigation of WTC over the coming years.