By Christian Schnaidt, Chief Operational Officer, aream Group

Nature conservation organizations have been lamenting the dangers of wind turbines for the animal kingdom for several years. The expansion of wind power can interfere with the habitats of birds and bats and in the worst case injure them. Especially during the time when the ground under the wind turbines is being broken up and reseeded, and thus many rodents and small birds are on the move, birds of prey are attracted. The red kite and some other birds of prey are under species protection and are therefore especially protected by the state environmental agencies.
 
In order to prevent these and other birds from being injured by the rotating rotor blades when hunting, but also avoiding to have to switch off the windmills permanently during the day, we have installed so-called "BirdVision" systems on our turbines, which solve the problem with tracking and AI. These camera systems, which were developed in 2019, use intelligent tracking to trace the exact flight paths of the wind power-sensitive birds and, if a threat to the bird is detected, shut down the turbines in good time. This reduces the risk of injury to the birds to an absolute minimum and minimizes the shutdown times of the wind turbines.