The Tracker, patrolling the trap line with eyes near aglaze, sat up upon finding this morning an intriguing and detailed tale at Technology Review by Peter Fairley: Stealth-Mode Wind Turbines. Cool, I thought, and boy back in the day of a thriving and competitive mass media this would have been in the daily papers.

Turns out, it was. Several UK outlets snapped it up a few weeks ago. The news is that a Danish wind turbine maker, in concert with a defense contractor in the UK, is working on a way to make arrays of wind turbines far less likely to spoof air traffic control and other radars, blurring their views of airplanes, weather, and other vital things. If reading about radar-stealthy coatings and the immense quantity of wind energy potential that has been held up due to worries over inadvertent radar jamming are of interest, these are for you. The Tech. Review piece is admirably detailed. But not the first.

Other stories:

• Guardian – Alok Jha: “Stealth’ blades take wind turbines off the radar ;
• BBC – ‘Stealth’ wind turbine deployed ;
• New Energy Focus (trade pub) Will Nichols: Successful trial of ocmposite ’stalth turbine’ opens up “9GW” of wind potential ;
• New Scientist – Colin Barras : Stealthy wind turbines aim to disappear from radar screens ; Never heard of a Salisbury screen? Me neither. This will end that.
• Plus, a US trade outfit got on board: North American Wind Power – Mark Del Franco: Stealth Turbine Testing in U.S. Still A Ways Off ;

Grist for the Mill: QinetiQ Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

This entry was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 3:19 pm and is filed under Environment & Energy Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.