The US Department of Energy (DoE) has chosen nine projects totalling just over $6m that aim to cut environmental compliance costs and environmental impacts of on- and offshore wind.
Funded by the DoE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Wind Energy Technologies Office, the projects aim to develop technologies to reduce wind project permitting time and costs, and increase the certainty of project development outcomes.
With cost-share by the project partners, the projects will total $9.5m.
Three projects will receive $2.3m to advance smart curtailment strategies to reduce energy loss from curtailment and wind farm environmental impacts to bats.
Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) will field-test its new technology which makes automated decisions to curtail wind turbines based on real-time wind speed and bat acoustic data.
American Wind Wildlife Institute, Washington, DC will develop and evaluate a predictive bat risk model that correlates bat risk with various environmental and weather variables. The institute will integrate the model into a smart curtailment programme in wind turbine software.
Stantec Consulting Services in Topsham, Maine will develop a predictive model that links measured bat risk factors to the effectiveness of smart curtailment regimes.
A further three projects will receive $1.4m to advance the commercial readiness of bat deterrent technologies to reduce curtailment.
National Renewable Energy Laboratory of Golden, Colorado will improve the effectiveness of an ultrasonic acoustic deterrent that will keep bats away from wind turbines.
General Electric Renewable Energy, in Greenville, South Carolina, will evaluate the relative effectiveness of ultrasonic deterrence versus wind turbine curtailment for different bat species.
Iowa State University of Ames will design a passive, blade-mounted ultrasonic bat deterrent device capable of producing a broad spectrum of ultrasonic tones.
Three projects will receive $2.5m to develop and validate pre- and post-construction monitoring and mitigation solutions for the offshore wind environment to ease regulatory barriers to deployment.
SMRU Consulting, in Friday Harbor, Washington will develop a cost-effective, reliable network of easily-deployed coastal buoys to monitor North Atlantic Right Whales. The project will validate models of noise produced by offshore wind construction activities.
Oregon State University of Corvallis, Oregon will design, build, and test an autonomous monitoring system to accurately detect bird and bat collisions with offshore wind turbines. The system will combine microphones and 360 degree cameras with analysis software to detect and verify impacts.
Western EcoSystems Technology in Cheyenne, Wyoming will further develop and test an advanced bat and bird collision detection system which combines turbine blade vibration sensors with cameras to quantify impacts.