German Bird Study Finds 99% Avoid Turbines, SunZia Progress

Allen, Joel, Rosemary, and Yolanda discuss a German study finding 99.8% of birds avoid wind turbines, challenging long-standing collision risk models. They also cover Pattern Energy’s SunZia project nearing completion as the Western Hemisphere’s largest renewable project, lightning monitoring strategies for large-scale wind farms, and offshore flange alignment technology. Register for Wind Energy O&M Australia 2026!Learn more about CICNDTDownload the latest issue of PES Wind Magazine Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather Guard’s StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the show on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes’ YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now, here’s your host. Alan Hall, Joel Saxon, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes. Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host Alan Hall in the queen city of Charlotte, North Carolina, where a cold front is just blown through, but we’re not nearly as cold as Joel was up in Wisconsin, Joel, you had a bunch of snow, which is really the first big storm of the season. Joel Saxum: Yeah, the crazy thing here was the Wind Energy Podcast. So since that storm I, we, we got up in northern Wisconsin, 18 inches of snow, and then we drove down on last Saturday after US Thanksgiving through Iowa, there’s another 18 inches of snow in Des Moines. I talked to a more than one operator that had icing and snow issues at their wind farms all through the northern Midwest of these states. So from [00:01:00] North Dakota. All the way down to Nebraska, Northern Missouri, over into Indiana. There was a ton of turbines that were iced up and or snowed in from that storm, Allen Hall: and Rosemary was in warm Australia with other icing knowledge or de-icing knowledge while the US has been suffering. Rosemary Barnes: But you know, on the first day of summer here, a couple of days ago, it was minus one here overnight. So. Um, yeah, it’s, uh, unseasonable and then tomorrow it’ll be 35. Allen Hall: The smartest one of us all has been Yolanda, down in Austin, Texas, where it doesn’t get cold. Yolanda Padron: Never. It’s so nice. It’s raining today and that’s about it. Traffic’s going crazy. Joel Saxum: Rain is welcome for us, isn’t it though, Yolanda? Yolanda Padron: It’s sweet. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does. Very rainy for like 24 hours. Allen Hall: We’ve been saving a story for a couple of weeks until Rosemary is back and it has to do with birds and a year long study over [00:02:00] in Germany. And as we know, one of the most persistent arguments against wind energy has been the risk to birds and permitting and operation shutdowns have been the norm, uh, based on models and predicted collision risks. Well. A new study comes, has just come out that says, what if the models are all wrong? And the new German study suggests that they may be wrong. The Federal Association of Offshore Wind Energy, known by its German acronym, BWO Commission Research to examine. Actual collision risk at a coastal wind farm in Northern Germany. The study was conducted by Biocon Consult, a German research and consulting firm, and funded by eight major offshore wind operators, including Sted, Vattenfall, RWE, and E, roa, and. Rosemary using some of the newer technology. They were able to track bird movements with radar [00:03:00] and AI and stereo vision cameras to, to watch birds move through and around, uh, some of these wind farms. And it analyzed more than 4 million bird movements and over 18 months, and they searched for collision victims and what they found was pretty striking more than 99.8% of both day migrating and night migrating birds. Avoided the turbines entirely. The study found no correlation between migration intensity and collision rates. And BD and BWO says The combination of radar and AI based cameras represents a methodological breakthrough. Uh, that can keep turbines moving even when birds are in transit. This is pretty shocking news, honestly, Rosemary, I, I haven’t seen a lot of long-term studies about bird movements where they really had a lot of technology involved to, besides binoculars, to, to look at bird movement. The [00:04:00] 99.8% of the migrating birds are going around The turbines. No, the turbines are there. That’s. Really new information. Rosemary Barnes: I think. I mean, if you never heard anything about wind turbines and birds, I don’t think you’d be shocked like that. Birds mostly fly around obstacles. That’s probably an...