The Anonymous Widower

No Birds Collided with Floating Wind Turbine Offshore Norway During Two-Year Monitoring Campaign

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.

This is the sub-heading.

Following over two years of ongoing monitoring, no bird collisions with the TetraSpar floating offshore wind turbine have been reported at the Marine Energy Test Centre (METCentre) in Norway.

These first three paragraphs give more details.

Since January 2022, the Norwegian company Spoor has mapped bird activity at the floating offshore wind turbine at METCentre, located about ten kilometres off the coast of Karmøy.

The extensive bird mapping is the first of its kind in Norway. The data collected provides a picture of which species pass by the turbines and how they move.

The cameras have captured over 21,000 bird passages since the monitoring began. The monitoring and analyses were conducted in collaboration with the Biodiversity Department at Multiconsult.

In Unique Study: Birds Avoid Wind Turbine Blades, I said this.

I must admit I’m not surprised, as I’ve landed a light aircraft many times with birds flying above the runway and I can’t remember ever hitting one. But I have seen several dive out of the way.

The two studies are both in Scandinavia, so are birds in that area genetically programmed to avoid wind turbine blades?

I found this page on BBC Science Focus, which is entitled How Many Birds Are Killed By Wind Turbines In The UK?

This was the first two paragraphs of the answer,

As wind energy has grown in popularity, reports of birds killed by wind turbines have become more common. Few studies have investigated the phenomenon, but estimates suggest that between 10,000 and 100,000 birds are killed by turbine blade strikes annually in the UK.

That’s a lot, but it’s worth noting that approximately 55 million birds are killed in the UK each year by domestic cats. Nevertheless, research suggests there may be ways to make wind turbines safer for wildlife. For example, a small-scale study in Norway found that painting one of the wind turbines blades black, reduced bird deaths by 70 per cent.

Perhaps British birds are more stupid than Scandinavian ones?

Or is it, that British moggies have learned to sit underneath wind turbines waiting for birds to fall out of the sky?

It looks like these are questions, that should be solved by more research.

October 24, 2024 - Posted by AnonW | Energy, Environment, World | Birds, Birds And Wind Turbines, Floating Wind Power, Flying, METCentre, Norway, Research, Sweden, Wind Power