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NEXRAD TRIAGENCY RADAR USERS/OPERATORS


INTRODUCTION


The goals of this web site are to increase awareness and understanding of a relatively new issue—Wind Farm (WF) interaction with Doppler Weather Radars – by providing:

  • Example imagery of wind turbine – radar interactions,
  • A summary of our process to assess potential impacts,
  • Potential mitigation solutions to both wind farm developers and radar users/operators, and
  • A point of contact at the WSR-88D Radar Operations Center.

For radar users/operators, we know that the WSR-88D is your primary tool for tracking severe weather, making severe weather warning decisions, and non-severe weather decisions. We also appreciate that WSR-88D data supports operations of the FAA National Airspace System, the Department of Defense, and other government and private entities. We are working hard to educate the wind energy industry about the impacts of wind farms on the WSR-88D, and asking wind farm developers to consult with us as early as possible in their development process to minimize project risk and operational conflicts with the Nation’s weather radar network and NOAA’s NWS’s severe weather warning program. If you have a concern about a wind farm (WF) project, please contact us and we will try to get all the interested parties together to discuss the issues.

We don’t hear about every WF project since developers are not required to notify us—you can help us there. The primary way we hear about wind farm projects is through the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). The NTIA is serving as a one-stop clearinghouse for developers, which allows developers to inform all interested government agencies (including us). However, if you "catch wind" (pun intended) of a proposed WF in your area, contact us and we will cross check it against our database of WF proposals. If we haven’t heard about it through the NTIA, we will try to contact the developers to obtain additional information.

A NEXRAD "button" is included in the "DOD Preliminary Screening Tool" on the FAA's Obstruction Evaluation / Airport Airspace Analysis (OE/AAA) web site (see second link below for details) allowing developers to perform their own preliminary, anonymous NEXRAD impact analysis.

We are funding studies at the University of Oklahoma to find a WSR-88D - based solution to removing wind turbine clutter (WTC). Our study efforts are described in this web site.

You can contact us at the WSR-88D Radar Operations Center at: Wind.Energy.Matters@noaa.gov