Research on the impact of wind farms on telecommunication services 

The TSR research group has developed several studies to characterize the scattered signals on the wind turbines and analyze the impact on several telecommunications services, such as analog and digital terrestrial television:

• Analysis of the potential impact of a wind farm on the telecommunications services (TV, radar services, fixed radio links) within the wind farm design process. The University of the Basque Country is an unbiased party to conduct studies that provided objective and unbiased results.
• Field measurements of electromagnetic emissions of wind turbines.
• Assessment of the TV signal quality before and after the installation of a specific wind farm, in order to evaluate a potential degradation.
• Consultancy and coordination tasks between public administrations, broadcasters, weather radar agencies and wind farm developers.

We have developed impact studies of real wind farms of real cases of wind farms before they are installed, in order to evaluate the potential impact on the above mentioned services, and if necessary, give some guidelines in the wind farm design. These projects have been requested by the wind farm promoters (Iberdrola from Spain, ESB from Ireland, Eólicas de Euskadi from the Basque Country), the involved administrations (regional government, local administrations) and telecommunications operators. In this area, we have developed technical studies, consultancy tasks and presentations of the impact studies to the involved companies and administrations.

A short presentation describing the research work can be downloaded here.

Software tool for the analysis of the potential impact of wind farms on radiocommunication services - Wi2

For more information, click here.

For more information, contact david.delavega@ehu.es 

Projects

Research projects to characterize the impact of wind farms

• Development of a methodology for identifying and characterization of the scattered signals from wind turbines
• Development of a scattering model for UHF band 
• Characterization of Doppler effect generated by rotating blades
• Development of a specific channel model for UHF band
• Measurement and characterization of the RF emissions

Public funding from Spanish Economics and Competitiveness Ministry (MINECO) and Basque Government.

Private funding from GAMESA and Eólicas de Euskadi (Iberdrola Renovables). 

Projects for developing algorithms and a software tool for impact studies 

• FP7 Project – SOPCAWIND: The SOPCAWIND project aims at developing a new service achieved through the development of a software tool for optimal wind farm design based on a large and heterogeneous set of digitalised data containing information from different fields (wind climate, geography, environment, archaeology and social-economy), that will be treated, validated, standardised and converted for this extent. More information:  SOPCAWIND
• Algorithms for analyzing the impact on different telecommunication services

Public funding from European Union (FP7) and Basque Government. 

Impact studies of real cases of wind farms

• Impact studies of more than 20 wind farm projects 
• Potential impact on TV, radio links, weather radars, Air Traffic Control radars, radionavigation aids (VOR, ILS), WiMAX, TETRA.
• Consultancy tasks: presentation of the results to the involved administrations, possible solutions for avoiding the impact, …

Impact studies developed for wind farm developers (Eólicas de Euskadi, Iberdrola Renovables, ESB International), telecommunication network administrators and regional and local administrations.

The results of our research work has been submitted to the International Telecommunication Union, Working Party 6A. Some of the outcomes have been included in the following public documents: 

Recommendation ITU-R BT.1893 “Assessment of impairment caused to digital television reception by a wind turbine”

Report BT.2142-1 “The effect of the scattering of digital television signals from a wind turbine”