Massive Off-Shore Wind Turbines Safe for Birds

Infrared monitoring shows that savvy seabirds steer clear of wind turbines.

Uncertainty surrounding wind power’s impact on wildlife–particularly the potential for deadly collisions between birds and turbines–has tarnished its image and even delayed some wind farms. Indeed, the first large offshore wind farm proposed for U.S. waters–the Cape Wind project in Massachusetts’s Nantucket Sound–has been held up in part by concerns that its 130 turbines could kill thousands of seabirds annually. Now a simple infrared collision-detection system developed by Denmark’s National Environmental Research Institute is helping clear the air.
The Thermal Animal Detection System (TADS) is essentially a heat-activated infrared video camera that watches a wind turbine around the clock, recording deadly collisions much as a security camera captures crimes. The first results, released this winter as part of a comprehensive $15 million study of Denmark’s large offshore wind farms, show seabirds to be remarkably adept at avoiding offshore installations. “There had been suggestions that enormous numbers of birds would be killed,” says Robert Furness, a seabird specialist at the University of Glasgow, who chaired the study’s scientific advisory panel. “There’s a greater feeling now among European politicians that marine wind farms are not going to be a major ecological problem, and therefore going ahead with construction is not going to raise lots of political difficulties.”

Technology Review