The Radar Assisted Shutdown On Demand (RASOD) and soaring bird monitoring at E.ON’s 50MW Barao Sao Joao Wind Farm is one of our most emblematic projects and our pilot for Birdtrack radar. This project is the world pioneer of our famous bird mortality mitigation system for wind farms – Radar Assisted Shutdown on Demand and Bird Monitoring system (RASB) for wind turbines.
This innovative system reduced bird mortality to zero. It’s the world’s most effective bird mortality mitigation system for wind turbines.
This system has been avoiding mortality of migratory birds by collision at Barao Sao Joao wind farm, a 50 MW E.ON wind farm in Southwest Portugal.
The wind farm is located in a flyway of international importance for migrating soaring birds (raptors and storks) over which migrate more than 4000 birds every Autumn. In each season these birds over fly over the wind farm on several occasions resulting in over 25 000 individual flight movements at the wind farm site.
RASB consists of radar and visual surveillance of the wind farm and shutting down turbines in order to avoid collisions and bird deaths. The results from this pilot largely exceed our expectation achieving zero fatalities of soaring birds every year since wind farm production phase, in 2010.
Unnecessary shutdown is fully avoided and the annual equivalent shutdown period is residual with minimal production loss.
RASB at Barao Sao Joao wind farm is an extremely successful case study of reconciliation between wind energy production and nature conservation at bird sensitive areas.