Monday, December 19, 2022

Drone-mounted "bat shield" could help prevent wind turbine mass killings of bats

Unreliable so called renewable wind power is not clean and it is an environmental hazard!

"... While wind turbines kill about 140,000-500,000 birds a year according to the Audubon Society, the death toll for bats is much higher. That's because as the turbine blades spin, they create a five-to-10-kilopascal drop in pressure behind them, according to Scientific American.
When bats fly through this low-pressure zone, their capillaries expand rapidly and the animals die from internal hemorrhaging. Birds tend to have stronger capillaries, so they can withstand the pressure drop more easily. ...
Researchers ... have come up with a system that could address both issues: brightly flashing lights and ultrasonic pulses delivered from drones that fly in front of the turbines. Flashing lights at bats might seem an odd choice as a deterrent if you have been led to believe that bats are blind, but the creatures do in fact have highly sensitive eyes that can pick up on visual clues. ...
Next, using a combination of ground-based RADAR, laser-based LIDAR tracking devices, and acoustic receivers, they tracked the bats' flight patterns. The drone was successful in rerouting about 40 percent [???] of the bats above the turbines. ..."

Drone-mounted "bat shield" could help prevent wind turbine collisions

On a Wing and Low Air: The Surprising Way Wind Turbines Kill Bats (published 2008) It is the pressure change--not the blades--that wipe out thousands of bats annually at wind farms


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