Biological and ecological monitoring for wind farms in operation
Biological and ecological monitoring for wind farms: we support you in meeting regulatory requirements through regular checks and well-founded data collection.
Wind energy is a central building block of the energy transition, but the protection of nature and biodiversity must also be safeguarded. If biological and ecological monitoring is required by the authorities for your wind turbine, we support you. Through regular checks and well-founded data collection, you can operate your wind farm in an environmentally compatible and lawful way. Our biology team covers all necessary specialist areas: birds, bats, amphibians, reptiles, insects and botany. For each site we develop an individual monitoring concept matched to the site and its requirements. You receive the results in meaningful reports including recommendations. Because our offices in Vienna, Parndorf and Munderfing are close to your wind farm, our experts are quickly on site.
For bat monitoring at wind turbines, nacelle monitoring is a common instrument. Bat activity during operation is recorded acoustically at nacelle height and evaluated together with wind speed and temperature. From the data, an operating algorithm can be derived that temporarily shuts the turbine down during periods of high activity, so that the collision risk falls. The measurement period and shutdown algorithm are defined site by site and depend on the permit decision, the data basis and the expert evaluation. The number and selection of the measuring turbines follow from the permit decision and the expert monitoring concept, and the algorithm takes account of the season and the time of night. If activity demonstrably remains low, operation can, depending on the permit condition, proceed without restriction. Evaluating the acoustic data together with wind speed and temperature makes it possible to define shutdown times in a targeted way rather than across the board.
For monitoring in the wind farm, site-specific data are important because activity differs greatly. Bat activity can differ between mountain forest and lowland sites, including over the course of the seasons, and must be surveyed site by site. Algorithms from the lowlands can therefore not simply be transferred. Multi-year measurements at several turbines of a park, supplemented by carcass searches to check the effect of the shutdown, make sense. Activity fluctuates greatly between years, turbines and individual nights and may be concentrated on a few nights; its extent and distribution depend on the site and the year. Shutdown times are therefore part of operation and are adjusted after the first evaluations. In bird monitoring in the wind farm, anomalies and collision events are the main focus, especially for rare, protected species such as the white-tailed eagle, the imperial eagle or the great bustard.
The foundation is often laid by the detailed nature conservation surveys in planning and environmental construction supervision during construction. Besides ecology, noise conditions are also an issue in operation; the sound emission measurement on wind turbines covers the follow-up measurement. For photovoltaics there is also monitoring for PV plants.
