Topband: Wind Farming

[David Aslin G3WGN]

I live in one of the areas of G-land with the highest concentration of wind farms.
What I learned while looking for a new low-noise QTH:
- small wind generators (50kW or less) have induction generators and therefore are essentially no-noise on HF & VHF.
- mid-size (up to around 1MW) usually have an inverter (think SMPS on a 20-50m (70-170ft) tower) which is a noise generator.
- large turbines most always use an inverter architecture and some of the towers are 80m/300ft or more high.  Gives them the ability to spread their hash over very wide areas and be prominent in the field of view of your antennas.
- I drove around several of the larger windfarms at distances from 3 miles down to 500ft or so.  One particularly noisy site (with IIRC 19 x 2MW turbines) could be heard out to 3 miles or so.  RX was KX3 with a 9ft whip on the roof of the SUV.  No doubt would be heard at a much greater distance at a fixed QTH with towers/beams.
- I set a goal of being no closer than 5 miles from a turbine of 1MW or more.  Hard to achieve on this crowded small island (it's a 1000 miles long but has a population of 60 million+).
- The ZL6QH experience appears to validate my experimental findings.

So if that farm really is local and they want to install big wind generators, be ready for QRN.
73, David G3WGN  M6O

-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Murray [mailto:adkmurray at yahoo.com] 
Sent: 30 March 2016 20:07
To: TopBand List <topband at contesting.com>
Subject: Topband: Wind Farming

Hello all,There is talk of local farmers bringing in windmill companies.  With the low prices now on milk it is one way to boost income.  Wondering if anyone has experienced any interference/noise from the generators.ThanksJimk2hn