It’s been known for some time that wind farms kill birds. Various ways to protect birds from wind farms have been devised one of which is to paint one aerofoil black (see below) which you can read about by clicking on this link. But the problem appears to have become very serious in France where a windfarm is to be axed after the death of 1000 birds. Why didn’t they adopt the painted aerofoil method or other mitigations?
The Times reports that seven wind turbines in France were criticised for being a “cemetery for birds”. The description followed the death of a golden eagle. The windfarm is to be dismantled.
The decision to axe the windfarm came from an appeal court in Nîmes, southern France. It’s a problem for President Macron as he wants to try and boost renewable energy construction to head towards lead zero carbon emissions.
He wants to speed up the building of windfarms but there are objections by heritage campaigners, local residents and bird lovers.
Right-wing politicians have called for a moratorium on wind turbines where there are already many of them.
The seven turbines in question were built in 2016 near Montpellier on the Bernagues plateau. They were built by a company called Valeco, a subsidiary of EnBW which is a German energy group.
A lawyer representing a coalition of environmental associations said that 1,099 birds have been found dead beneath the turbines in 2019. He appears to have coined the cemetery labelling by saying that “This is a veritable cemetery at the foot of the turbines”.
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Anger against the turbines grew significantly when a golden eagle died after colliding with one of the blades. There were only two golden eagles in the area. A spokeswoman for the coalition of groups opposing turbines, Marjolaine Villey-Migraine, said: “This is principally a fight for biodiversity”.
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The court upheld the group opposing the turbines and declared that they were causing “serious and proven” environmental damage.
The court gave the operator 15 months to remove the windfarm. They were also ordered to pay the environmental associations €3000 a day if they failed to meet the deadline.
Comment: there must be a method to protect the birds from the turbine blades. I have mentioned one above; painting one blade black but where it is the research on this?
A November 2020 study (Comprehensive Bird Preservation at Wind Farms) states that researchers estimated that in the US up to 500,000 birds die annually due to collisions with wind turbines. The study looks at a sophisticated solution “based on a stereo-vision system embedded in distributed computing and loT paradigms.”
It sounds very complicated but birds are detected when they approach the wind turbines and then the system activates “a collision avoidance routine composed of light and sound deterrence and the turbine stopping procedure.”
In another study entitled “Mitigating wind-turbine induced avian mortality: Sensory, aerodynamic and cognitive constraints and options”, it is suggested that constructors can build in warning signals which may be “based on optical or audible stimuli”. The hearing of birds is inferior to humans but they have higher visual acuity and temporal resolution than humans. This information should be used to create avoidance methods. There are ways to build-in “mitigation measures” to reduce “the general level of conflicts with birdlife and thus enable both the development of new sites, at sites that have been declared having too high conflict levels, and utilise the wind resources better at specific sites without increasing the conflict levels.”
The point is that there must be ways of mitigating the problem rather than simply dismantling an entire wind farm as appears to be the case in this instance. Wind farms are vital to the creation of renewable and sustainable energy going forward.
