New Research on Smart Curtailment for Bats at Wind Energy Facilities Supported by the U.S. Department of Energy

Mass. Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs

Thursday, March 26, 2020

This webinar was hosted by the National Wind Coordinating Collaborative (NWCC).

The final NWCC webinar in a series on research supported by the U.S. Department of Energy features presentations on smart curtailment strategies aimed at minimizing energy loss from curtailment while reducing impacts to bats at wind energy facilities:

  • Activity-based Informed Curtailment: Using Acoustics to Design and Validate Smart Curtailment at Wind Farms: Predictive model from Stantec that links measured bat risk factors to the effectiveness of smart curtailment strategies.
  • Developing and Evaluating a Smart Curtailment Strategy Integrated with a Wind Turbine Manufacturer Platform: Predictive bat risk model from the American Wind Wildlife Institute (AWWI) that correlates bat risk with various environmental and weather variables and integrates with wind turbine smart curtailment software.
    • Presenter: Katy Battle, American Wind Wildlife Institute (AWWI)
    • Presentation
  • Bat Smart Curtailment: Efficacy and Operational Testing: Technology that aims to reduce bat fatalities using real-time data on bat presence and wind speed and integrates with wind turbine control systems.
  • Evaluation of the Turbine Integrated Mortality Reduction (TIMR) as a Smart Curtailment: New technology from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) that makes automated decisions to curtail wind turbines based on real-time wind speed and bat acoustic data.
    • Presenter: Christian Newman, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI)
    • Presentation

The National Wind Coordinating Collaborative (NWCC), formed in 1994 and retired in 2020, was initiated and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL); AWWI facilitated the NWCC from 2012 until 2020. Learn more.