Study: Wind turbines in North Carolina don’t impact radar

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. (AP) — Wind turbines standing on 22,000 acres of North Carolina farmland do not interfere with a Navy radar system in Virginia, according to a study.

The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk reports the study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also said a developer should not expand the 104-tower Amazon Wind Farm to 150 turbines as originally planned.

The towers are part of Amazon’s goal to produce more renewable energy.

The Navy’s Relocatable Over-the-Horizon Radar located at Naval Support Activity Northwest Annex in southern Chesapeake monitors more than 10 million square miles (25,899,881square kilometers) of air space for the military and law enforcement agencies.

Avangrid Renewables completed the wind farm in February 2017. After more than a year of operation, the latest report concludes that the original model was correct.

The report could be justifying the MIT’s model and the military’s agreement with Avangrid rather than protecting the radar’s mission, said John Droz, a physicist based in Morehead City. MIT also did the recent study.

The turbines were expected to produce 208 megawatts, or enough to power 60,000 homes a year. Avangrid Renewables will not release the amount of power actually produced after more than a year of operation, said company spokesman Paul Copleman.

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Information from: The Virginian-Pilot, http://pilotonline.com