It is a radar system solution for automatic detection and tracking of bird and bat targets for surveys, monitoring and mortality risk mitigation. It works in single and dual radar tracking configurations providing large data collection and analysis of long time series with classification of radar targets into groups of species.
It is designed to operate in onshore and offshore environments.
Birdtrack has been designed and optimized for selective turbine shutdown as a bird mortality mitigation system for wind farms and a bird migration monitoring tool.
The radar sensor allows an early detection of bird targets before arriving at the wind farm (up to 12km detection range). Bird trajectories are tracked and collision risk is assessed. At collision risk situations turbines are selectively shut down by pitching their blades (up to 15 seconds stalling time) until birds safely fly away and the wind farm resumes production. The selected turbines remain stalled until the collision risk is eliminated.
Birdtrack provides the opportunity to develop high performance and sustainable wind energy projects by keeping high availability and production while being safe for birds.
This radar system solution includes capabilities for tracking bird and bat targets for surveys, monitoring and mortality risk mitigation. These capabilities include the detection of bird and bat activity with analysis of flight patterns, georeferenced movement parameters, pathways, altitudes, mean traffic rates and other environmental conditions. Birdtrack radar system can operate autonomously and be remotely accessed. It can be configured for portable and fixed mounted stations with optional remote access capabilities.
Birdtrack incorporates signal-processing technology and advanced tracking algorithms that optimize automatic detection, tracking and classification of bird targets.
It includes modules for automatic data grabbing, calibration, ground and weather clutter filtering. Its site-specific adaptability renders very high detection efficiency and reduces significantly errors in target classification. Birdtrack includes a database management system that stores very large datasets of georeferenced individual flight trajectories and associated parameters that allows data export for robust statistical analysis.
This innovative system reduced bird mortality to zero. It’s the world’s most effective bird mortality mitigation system for wind turbines.
Unnecessary shutdown is fully avoided and the annual equivalent shutdown period is residual with minimal production loss.