Congressman Questions Safety Of Wind Turbines

From The Desk Of Congressman Chris Smith

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A top Biden Administration official stonewalled Rep. Chris Smith (R-4th) at a congressional hearing on offshore wind when pressed with studies that call into question the safety and survivability of more than 3,400 offshore wind turbines slated for the Jersey Shore.

“Can these offshore wind turbines - each the size of the Chrysler building in New York City - sustain a category 2 or 3 hurricane?” asked Smith, who raised concerns about the massive offshore wind turbines in letters to the Biden Administration in January and has yet to receive a response. “I am happy to have our folks get back to you,” said Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Director Liz Klein. Smith, who represents several military installations in his congressional district, also raised the concern that military and civilian vessels may be “significantly put at risk by radar malfunction caused by ocean wind turbines,” citing a 2020 BOEM analysis that concluded “future offshore wind energy installations on the Atlantic coast may impact land-based radar systems…”

“Is that true? Is there a possibility that some 3,400 wind turbines proposed to be deployed off our coast could make navigation less safe?” asked Smith, who also cited a 2022 study that “wind turbine generator mitigation techniques have not been substantially investigated, implemented, matured, or deployed.”

“Again no answer from Director Klein on the specific question,” Smith said. “Have the mitigation techniques been investigated, implemented, matured, or deployed?”

“We have worked very closely with our partners at the Department of Defense all throughout the process as we identify sites for offshore wind,” said Klein, who offered no specifics.

The BOEM Director’s comments came just one week after Bloomberg reported that the Pentagon has deemed several areas off the East Coast as “highly problematic” for the development of offshore wind, due to proximity to military operations.

Government Response To Radar

The U.S. Department of Energy has already studied the impact of wind turbines on radar in 2014 and again in 2023. They have released plans for how to reduce the problem, including:

• Designing the wind farm layout to minimize the impacted area of radar coverage or to allow for maximum radar coverage within the project, such as by increasing the spacing between turbines within the project Terrain masking, or placing turbines on the opposite side of elevated terrain in relation to the radar so they will be blocked from view

• Relocating proposed turbines or reducing their height so that they fall outside the radar line of sight

• Eliminating proposed turbines located in areas that result in high radar interference impacts.

Siting alone may not eliminate impacts or reduce them to an acceptable level. In these cases, other mitigation techniques, including the deployment of new radar-related software upgrades and/or hardware, can also reduce potential wind energy impacts on radar operations. Examples include:

• Adding infill radars in or around the wind project to maintain existing radar coverage Modifying the existing radar system software’s constant false alarm rates, clutter maps, or other filtering and/or preliminary tracking routines

• Upgrading the hardware or software of the affected radar to implement advanced filtering techniques that can remove interference from turbines.

In most cases, siting and other mitigations have resolved conflicts and allowed wind projects to co-exist effectively with radar missions.

For more information, visit windexchange. energy.gov/projects/radar-interference-review-process