A cost-effective wildlife activity and mortality detection system for utility scale wind turbines

There are many issues that a wind developer must consider when siting a wind project, but one that has become increasingly pressing in the U.S. is the effect of turbines on local wildlife. New onshore wind development is occurring in the US Midwest, MidAtlantic and Northeast, and has brought wind plants into greater conflict with wildlife, especially bats. The burgeoning US offshore wind industry must also contend with these wildlife conflict issues. This creates significant barriers for the wind industry to hit the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Wind Vision Report goals of supplying 20% of US electricity demand by 2030, and 35% by 2050. To reduce those barriers, we propose an automated wildlife activity and mortality detection system that will address both the cost and precision of estimating wildlife activity and mortality around wind turbines. It is only through this understanding that more effective and cost-efficient methods for reducing the turbine impacts will be found. The innovation proposed is to develop a hardware and software package solution to monitor the air space around the turbine to directly quantify the amount and timing of these wildlife interactions. The result will be a field-ready system that can provide 24/7 monitoring. During Phase 1, commercial-off-the-shelf cameras and millimeter wave radar will be evaluated. Testing on surrogates will determine what the performance of both technologies is under a variety of field condition. The processing algorithms needed to transform the raw sensor data into actionable information will be developed. Once the performance of the individual sensor is characterized, a system design to leverage the strength of both will be created in preparation of the prototype field validation in Phase 2. This product would be offered directly to wind developer and operators. It will be able to reduce the amount of turbine curtailment needed to conserve species while at the same time reducing the manual searches required for monitoring a wind plants wildlife impacts. This would both reduce the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for a plant will at the same time increasing energy yield and therefore revenue. This would allow for more profitable onshore and offshore wind projects without compromising the long-term viability of wildlife species.