How to avoid killing birds with wind turbines

[henxan]

Well. I'm not sure how to explain this. Wind power demands wind, so I think you should forget about wind power in LA.. Sorry..

 

[scottschopp]

i am tring to discuess the altamont pass area, not la.

 

[russ_watters]

I would also expect significantly higher efficiency from a standard turbine.

I was going to give him the benefit of the doubt on that, but yes - those turbines just don't look very efficient to me.

Scottschopp, is there an operational wind farm anywhere that uses these turbines?

 

[rcgldr]

What would be the issue with a very large sphere made of chicken wire and supports surrounding the main propellor, other than cost? It wouldn't significantly affect the wind flow, and would prevent birds from getting to the propellors.

 

[henxan]

jeff reid:
Lol. pretty nice idea :D.. To prevent birds to get into the propellers one would need very small meshes. Probably 10cm in diameter. And you would need rigid wires, framing. And it would be ugly. Most certainly slow down the wind.

Is this really a big problem? Wouldnt birds who survive give more offspring likely to survive? survival of the fittest, or smartest in this case :)

 

[P.Ramesh]

hi, my name is scott schopp, I work for a company that has come up with a solution for the wildlife that has died at altamont pass wind farm and every other wind farm in the world. We have come up with a new design for wind turbines that causes no damage to the areas animal, windenergygroupinc.com is the web address , and i want to start to place new turbines in altamont pass wind farm asap. There is no reason that one bird should die in an attempt, to help the worlds energy problem. We are a new company and our turbine is the same size and is more effecient that current units. It would fit perfectly in the area, the problem is i can't get the proper contact info to whoever is in charge of the altamont wind farm. need help, please email me. thanks scott schopp

Can you Pl tell me the site name or any Picture of that model?

 

[Saladsamurai]

jeff reid:

Is this really a big problem? Wouldnt birds who survive give more offspring likely to survive? survival of the fittest, or smartest in this case :)

Right, because evolutionary effects take place over the course of days.

 

[henxan]

saladsamurai:

The rate at which mutations take place are connected to the time until fertility; have you ever considered that birds may live shorter than humans?

 

[FredGarvin]

I agree that the chicken wire idea is a no-go. Not only would it structurally not even support its own weight, it would distort the inlet flow.

I would venture a guess that visual means would be a possibility. Aside from taping old pie pans to the blades, what about reflectors and lights of some kind?

 

[Loren Booda]

What about an array of windsocks with fabric capillaries that generate power from their fluid pressure - or mechanical orientation - changing with the wind, but allow winged creatures to glance or pass through relatively unharmed?

 

[Saladsamurai]

jeff reid:
Is this really a big problem? Wouldnt birds who survive give more offspring likely to survive? survival of the fittest, or smartest in this case :)

saladsamurai:

The rate at which mutations take place are connected to the time until fertility; have you ever considered that birds may live shorter than humans?

My point was...well...that your point kind of sucked. That's all. So to answer your question, no.

 

[binzing]

If it has already been stated, forgive me. Anyways, there's a company with a new type of wind turbine that uses a horizontal double helix type blade that is much safer for animals, and works much better. For traditional types of turbines, you could use falconry to scare them off. It's been used at airports such as JFK with great results and only needs to be done like once a week from what I remember seeing about it, plus there'd be plenty of falconers that would love to have that opportunity to fly there birds (which is a near daily event).

 

[rcgldr]

You could use falconry to scare them off.

Except for the fact that predator birds are just as likely to get whacked by those huge propellors, and a falconer isn't going release his falcon in the middle of a wind farm. Also it's more likely that the type of birds that get struck by those windmills are not the type of birds that falcons go after (they're not pigeons), and that wild falcons are also victims to wind farms. In the case of the wind farms between San Francisco and Los Angeles, the birds involved in prop strikes are probably condors (rare), hawks, pergrine falcons, ravens, seagulls, and turkey vultures.

I fly radio control gliders and see a lot of birds at a local slope site. The predator birds generally only go after rodents and smaller birds, or poor flying birds like over-fed pigeons. The local ravens outfly and outclimb the predator birds, climbing above them and the diving down on them, driving most of them away. Seagulls, once inland, have usually thermalled upwards well out of the range of predators to save energy. There is a lot of thermal activity at this local slope site, and the seagulls will thermal out of site or into clouds, since unlike soaring predators, they don't need to be able to see prey on the ground or other birds in the air.

In the case of the California windmills, the so called chicken wire solution wouldn't require a very fine mesh, since most of the affected birds are fairly large.

 

[henxan]

Ooops.. Didnt see you had answered this Jeff reid:
The problem isn't birds being killed, the problem is that Birds of Prey are being killed.. In Norway one wind power plant killed something like 12 white-tailed eagles within the first months after startup. It is usually the big birds, higher in the ecosystem that suffer. Then again, the rate dropped quite much, and now you have an even amount killed throughout the year.

Saladsamurai:
My sucky answers may have something to do with your sucky comments also. I do admit its a bit difficult to distinguish between "funny comments/answers" as reply to a serious comment or a completely ridiculous commen.

My final point is: is this really a problem? A couple of birds being killed?

And, to you saladsamurai: do you have certain data of the adaption time until birds learns that they should not venture into a area occupied by wind power plant?

 

[rcgldr]

adaption time to wind farms

When all the birds are dead, then it's not an issue anymore.

 

[henxan]

this is pretty stupid. What about roads and cars? every year enormous numbers of animals get hit by cars.. So why are those animals not extinct?

windmills are not going to kill all the birds. birds will learn to shun the areas occupied by windmills.

 

[Saladsamurai]

My final point is: is this really a problem? A couple of birds being killed?

And, to you saladsamurai: do you have certain data of the adaption time until birds learns that they should not venture into a area occupied by wind power plant?

No. Do you? I believe that the OP was looking for solutions to a particular problem not useless comments by some heckler who calls into question the validity of his problem. That's all.

If I came to PF looking for advice on a particular matter, I would be quite agitated to get feedback that merely told me that 'that isn't worth fussing over.'

Frankly most of your comments have been uninformative and closed-minded.

Happy New Year,
Casey

 

[JeremyGilbert]

Birds are serious issue when acts as pest. Several bird control tools are recommended as the best way to prevent birds from nesting and roofing on home buildings and other property. These harmless deterrents and repellers are simply used to just drive birds away from the fields and buildings. Each and every year, many building owners spent lots of time and money to clean and restore damage done to the property by them. Bird droppings can also cause serious liability risk and threaten to get slipped.

 

[JeremyGilbert]

Bird running into wind turbine blades and killing themselves appears to a much bigger problem than many people want the public to know. In fact a single cluster of wind generators in a year or two could kill more birds than the Santa Barbara, CA mini-oil spill, which caused a huge media stir prompting President Richard Nixon to change the EPA laws.

 

[johnbbahm]

How about recording a raptor of some type in an attack dive and mimic the sound with whistles.
Also some grating strips on the blades would reflect different spectrum's of sun light based on the angle of the blade. Most birds do follow VFR, so night is not much issue.
Some very bright blade tip LEDs might also let the birds see the swept area as an object.

 

[skeptic2]

I've have been a little involved in the issue of migrating birds flying into radio towers at night. To my knowledge no one is going out to the base of the towers every morning during migrating season and counting dead birds so we really don't know how big of a problem it is.

It seems to me that ornithologists have noticed a decline in bird populations and are looking for a culprit. Besides wind turbines and radio towers, I've heard that house cats are extraordinarily efficient at catching birds.