Abstract:

While all forms of electricity generation will have direct and indirect impacts on wildlife, these impacts can be particularly adverse when the species in concern is endangered or has particular characteristics that make it susceptible to changes in habitat. To address the concerns of bat mortality and wind farms, industry and conservation groups have teamed up to propose and test mitigation techniques that would allow bats and wind turbines to coexist without endangering the long-term population of the former or crippling the economic viability of the latter. Several bat mitigation strategies involve changes in the operation of wind turbines. The purpose of this project is to analyze, estimate, and quantify the impacts of bat curtailment strategies on the energy output of wind farms. The type of strategy, including when turbines are curtailed and how they are curtailed, will result in differences to the reduction in bat mortality as well as to the estimated energy loss for each turbine. Using data from meteorological towers located primarily around the Northeast and Midwest, the study compares the differences in energy loss due to turbine curtailment based on time of day, seasons, wind speeds, migratory periods, and weather. This presentation also examines the effectiveness of the curtailment strategy with the impact on energy production with data from actual field studies. The study provides guidance for future studies, addresses any regional differences in bat curtailment strategies, and gives developers preliminary energy loss estimates due to different bat curtailment strategies.