Introduction and Motivation
Growth of Wind-Power Industry
With the cost of oil and natural gas continually increasing, many companies have turned their
focus to different forms of renewable energy production, such as solar and wind generation.
In particular, wind-power production has become increasingly popular over the last several
years due in part to many factors, some of which are listed below:
- Advancements in wind-power technology have allowed the cost of producing energy from wind to become comparable to that of oil or gas [American Wind Energy Association, 2001b]
- No waste by-products are produced by wind power thus eliminating the cost of disposing of hazardous materials
- Tax benefits exist for the use of environmentally friendly power generation
As a result of these advances in technology, in addition to environmental concerns, numerous wind farms
- assemblages of 25 to 200 wind turbines in a relatively small area -
have been constructed across the country and the world. Obviously, areas with generally steady
high winds are prime locations for wind turbines. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
has conducted a survey of wind speeds across the nation. The annual average wind power
classification results are shown in Figure 1.
Areas with a category 3 or above (darker colors)
are considered relatively prime locations for wind farms.
As seen in the figure, the Texas
and Oklahoma panhandles and central Kansas are category 4 and consequently have seen
rapid growth in wind-power farms over the last several years.
Figure 1: Map of wind resources over the United States. Wind farm locations are selected based on the
classification of a region. Sites with a rating of 3 or higher (darker colors) are considered good
[NREL, 2005].
As with many activities, there are often unforeseen consequences which affect people or
industries not directly related to the activity. This is the case for wind-power generation,
with the affected industries being any which use radar, such as aircraft tracking or weather
surveillance. For this study, we are particularly concerned with the effects of wind turbine
farms on observations of weather using the National Weather Service (NWS) network of
high-powered, S-band, Doppler weather radars (WSR-88D), which are maintained by the
Radar Operations Center (ROC).
Next:
Characteristics