The US Department of Energy has awarded funding to renewable consultancy Natural Power to develop and test a smart curtailment system to protect bats while minimising power loss during wind farm operations.
The DoE selected 10 projects to receive funding totalling $6.8m (€6m) that will reduce environmental compliance costs and the environmental impacts of onshore and offshore wind energy.
Natural Power is one of four organisations that will receive $2.8m collectively to advance progress in smart curtailment strategies to minimise energy loss from curtailment and wind farm environmental impacts to bats.
Natural Power global wildlife technology head Christine Sutter said: “Technologies that reduce the impact to bats, birds and other wildlife can lead to less curtailment when wind turbines need to be shut down.
“In turn, this will lead to greater annual energy production and lower wind energy costs – a goal we are all working towards.”
Natural Power submitted two scopes for consideration and both were successful.
The first will be to develop a technology to reduce bat fatalities using real-time data on bat presence and wind speed, which can easily integrate with any wind turbine control system.
Additionally, the team will work with the National Renewable Energy Lab to test and improve the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) interface to ensure that it meets cyber security and compliance standards.