More information
Description
The exploitation of wind energy, particularly in the marine environment, presents several advantages, however it is responsible for thousands of seabirds deaths every year, many of them of protected species. This issue conditioned the implementation and growth of these wind farms, being responsible for long downtime periods of energy production, causing high losses (it is estimated that annually offshore wind farms may experience losses of up to 20% due to stoppages due to birds). The ArtSurf TEC project focuses on the development of an innovative solution, which using radar technology, sound cameras and microphones, makes possible a complete environmental monitoring and marine surveillance of seabirds, cataloging the various species and providing the necessary information for decision making. This solution will allow early detection of bird species before they reach the wind farm. In case of selected species and in situations of risk of collision, the turbines are selectively turned off until the risk of collision is eliminated. Strix main activities will be related with the definition of the technical requirements of the projects, as well as the development of monitoring software and hardware and will be the entity responsible for the implementation of the pilot and its testing. NINA is specializing in processing bird data, so they will be responsible for analysing collected data, handling it and defining forecasting models. This technology will prevent thousands of seabird deaths and contribute to the protection of endangered species and it is also an important support tool to developers and managers of offshore windfarms, allowing an optimization of the layout and downtime due to the impact of the passage of seabirds. It’s estimate that this solution will prevent 99% of bird’s deaths and losses in electricity production due to the passage of birds will be only 0.03%.
Summary of project results
Bird monitoring in remote locations requires automated monitoring technologies that measure flight trajectories but must also be able to identify the bird species. There are several bird monitoring technologies, but only acoustic sensors are able to identify species in low visibility conditions, especially in the nighttime. Therefore, the objective of this project is to develop an acoustic sensing technology capable of identifying species at distances of at least 1km, which is crucial to monitor birds flying through offshore wind farms.
STRIX designed, manufactured and tested two fully operational radar-guided microphones, including all software modules to record bird callings, identify the species using an AI algorithm and store the acquired data in a database. NINA developed methodologies to analyse the bird monitoring data, to map the bird’s use of the landscape and to study the potential impact if windfarms are installed at the studied locations.
The prototypes were tested in the lab and in the field, where they were able to capture sound at distances beyond 1km. The bird species identification algorithm achieved 87% of True Positive rate in the lab and in the close range during the field tests. Good precisions were achieved up to 200m with 65% precision, but these significantly dropped above 500m, where only species that vocalize in the low frequencies were identified. The results are greatly affected by the background noise and the wind conditions, therefore, only testing in offshore operational conditions will definitely validate the developed acoustic bird monitoring technology.
This project showed that bird species can be identified at a distance and with no visibility using a directional microphone. Such microphones can now be integrated in bird monitoring systems usually composed by radars and video cameras. This new tool will improve the capability of automatically identifying bird species and therefore, provide more information to the automated stoppage systems that will be mandatory for the newly installed wind farms. Further, the developed methodologies are also a powerful tool to estimate the potential impact on the bird life that uses the wind farm area.
Summary of bilateral results
The Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA) was a very important partner since they have complementary capabilities with STRIX. STRIX is a technology developer and, a manufacturer and end user of bird monitoring systems, while NINA is a research centre, capable of developing and validating with scientific accuracy, the best practices and methodologies for using the bird monitoring technologies. Without NINA, the developed radar-guided microphone would not be validated, and the limitations would not be needed.STRIX provided the databases for NINA to explore, develop impact assessment and collision risk methodologies. On the other hand, NINA developed the methodologies to validate the radar-guided microphone that STRIX employed on the field.The collaboration between NINA and STRIX is not new and will continue with the upcoming bird monitoring project STRIX is already executing. NINA provides the scientific oversight, ensuring proper methodologies are being used and that the results are accurate and reliable. STRIX and NINA have the aligned objective of providing more information on the impacts that wind farms have on bird life, both onshore and offshore. This collaboration is a result from this alignment and will continue to the far future.