BERLIN, June 11 (Xinhua) -- Germany's more than 60 airports would upgrade the conventional ground-based area navigation to satellite-based one by 2030, the German air navigation service provider DFS announced on Friday.
Once the upgrades were completed, additional wind turbines could be approved in the protection zones around navigation facilities to expand Germany's wind onshore capacity, according to the Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi).
The conversion "will free up additional land for the erection of wind turbines with a capacity of around 700 megawatts," said the Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy Peter Altmaier in a statement.
A 15-km protection zone is still applied around DFS ground-based navigation facilities because wind turbines could distort signals.
The modernization of the facilities would be funded with 14 million euros (17 million U.S. dollars), according to the DFS statement.
"Thanks to technical modernization and a new method of calculating the potential interference, even more wind turbines can be erected in the protection zones of navigation facilities in the future," DFS noted. (1 euro = 1.22 U.S. dollars) Enditem
