Study: Seabirds Steer Away From Offshore Wind Turbines

The risk of seabirds colliding with offshore wind turbines is less than half of what would be expected based on current understanding as seabirds have been witnessed to exhibit avoidance behaviour and change their flight path to avoid the turbines, a recent study has shown.

The Bird Collision Avoidance Study, carried out as part of the Offshore Renewables Joint Industry Programme (ORJIP), is the first of its kind employing a multi-sensor monitoring system, combining human observer-based tracking with a system that automatically recorded seabird movements, at a working offshore wind farm in the English Channel. Radars were also used to record data 24 hours a day for two years.

During the two years of fieldwork, a significant number of videos were recorded at a representative area of Vattenfall’s Thanet wind farm off the Kent coast.

This resulted in the analysis of over 600,000 videos, of which only 12,131 contained evidence of bird activity and only six collisions with turbines were observed.

The conclusions from this research on collision risk will allow better-informed wind farm design and consent decisions just as the next generation of more powerful offshore turbines are being tested and manufactured.

Piers Guy, UK Country Manager, Vattenfall said: “This pioneering study, hosted at Vattenfall’s Thanet Offshore Wind Farm, is a significant step forward in our understanding of the way in which seabirds avoid offshore wind turbines, and comes at a crucial time as the next generation of wind turbines are designed and developed. This research will support UK Government plans to rapidly and sustainably grow the offshore wind sector by 2030.”

The multimillion-pound, collaborative study was commissioned by eleven leading offshore wind developers, The Crown Estate, The Crown Estate Scotland and Marine Scotland, was supported with funding from the UK Government and was managed by the Carbon Trust. The project was developed and run with the support and advice from the UK and Northern Europe’s leading ornithologists and environmental advisors such as Natural England and RSPB.