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Bird deaths down 70 percent after painting wind turbine blades:
Something as simple as black paint could be the key to reducing the number of birds that are killed each year by wind turbines. According to a study conducted at a wind farm on the Norwegian archipelago of Smøla, changing the color of a single blade on a turbine from white to black resulted in a 70-percent drop in the number of bird deaths.
Not everyone is a fan of wind turbines, however, because of their impact on local populations of flying fauna like birds and bats.
[...] Previous laboratory studies have suggested that birds may not be very good at seeing obstructions while they're flying, and adding visual cues like different colored fan blades can increase birds' chances of spotting a rapidly rotating fan.
[...] And so, in 2013, each of the four turbines in the test group had a single blade painted black. In the three years that followed, only six birds were found dead due to striking their turbine blades. By comparison, 18 bird deaths were recorded by the four control wind turbines—a 71.9-percent reduction in the annual fatality rate.
Digging into the data a little more showed some variation on bird deaths depending upon the season. During spring and autumn, fewer bird deaths were recorded at the painted turbines. But in summer, bird deaths actually increased at the painted turbines, and the authors note that the small number of turbines in the study and its relatively short duration both merit longer-term replication studies, both at Smøla and elsewhere.
Journal Reference:
Roel May, Torgeir Nygård, Ulla Falkdalen, et al. Paint it black: Efficacy of increased wind turbine rotor blade visibility to reduce avian fatalities [open], Ecology and Evolution (DOI: 10.1002/ece3.6592)
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday August 27 2020, @02:56PM (19 children)
Why were they, essentially all, white to begin with? I've driven by some wind farms, they were around even when I was a kid. Every single one was white and pretty much every picture I've seen, all of the turbines were white. Even the towers themselves.
I would assume they were white, for the same reason white cars are common. They don't get as hot during the summer. Whereas a black SUV will soak up those sun rays like nothing else. Would a different color work just as well? Or is it, because most birds don't have color vision? So, white is nearly invisible to them, whereas black is as visible as it gets?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2020, @03:26PM
A agree with your assumption, white to reduce solar heating. Since these long blades are composite (epoxy-glass or other matrix-fiber combinations), they are much more sensitive to high temps than metal blades would be. Black might be OK for high latitudes, but not for hotter/low latitude sites?
While they are doing the bird strike experiment, they should also be monitoring the black blades for any structural problems.
Would also be interesting if they know about time of day for the bird strikes -- just off hand, it seems like white would be better at times of low light, while black is better in mid-day?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2020, @04:32PM (4 children)
They should just cover them in multi-color glitter. Reflective enough that they won't get hot, and highly visible.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Thursday August 27 2020, @06:58PM (2 children)
They should put blue LEDs on them. But then they would have a problem with consumertards hitting them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2020, @08:16PM (1 child)
iSore is probably copyrighted.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Friday August 28 2020, @10:12PM
It's just a quick search away, but you're looking for a trademark. It's not really practical to have single-word copyrights.
iSore [uspto.gov]
Good news! It's abandoned.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Dr Spin on Thursday August 27 2020, @07:42PM
The best answer would be to project Youtube cat videos onto them!
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2020, @05:26PM
They were probably painted white so that they wouldn't be intrusive looking in the environment. Painting them "inmate orange" would probably work better than black.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2020, @05:28PM (4 children)
Because white is a nice clean color that's easy to sell. There's no reason for them to be white other than that. Heat dissipation on a something rotating that quickly shouldn't even enter the equation.
As far as white cars go, that's got nothing to do with it. Ford didn't sell any white cars for quite a while after being founded, they were all black. White cars look good on the lot, but they get dirty quickly and really show the dust. Sure, they might be slightly less hot than other colors, but I doubt the difference is large enough to worry about. Plus, when the temperatures dip that becomes a negative rather than positive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2020, @05:50PM (1 child)
Wrong on both counts. Radiant absorption and emission coefficients are always equal. White cars effectively have better insulation. They are significantly cooler in summer and warmer in winter.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday August 27 2020, @10:27PM
Vehicles in the family have been white, dark blue, medium blue, dark red (plain paint) and light blue, turquoise, tropical yellow, light gray (metallic paint). Of all of them the one which looked worse dirty was the tropical yellow one. The white ones are indeed way better in the summer. The color of the interior counts too.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday August 28 2020, @01:40PM (1 child)
White cars also seem to have fewer collisions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2020, @07:12AM
It's pretty close but I think bright yellow just beats it.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday August 27 2020, @11:07PM
White is cheap. Pigments cost more, and might weigh more. And you need a considerable amount for those big parts.
Why didn't they try painting eyeballs on there like they did for the cows' butts?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday August 28 2020, @01:32PM (5 children)
Interesting that stereotypically the best anti-UV pigments have always been black not white, so you'll tend to see black plastics and black composites "most of the time".
My theory is the white windmills are FAA related. I am intimately familiar with tower regs personally and professionally. There are strict laws about the color patterns of towers and once you know them, at a glance you can tell how tall a tower is and therefore how far away it is. IF the FAA thought they could get away with it, I'm sure they'd demand rotor blades be covered in red and white LEDs for safety reasons.
Remember a couple dead birds is a minor environmental problem compared to the environmental catastrophe of a dead 747.
Meanwhile birds get eaten by other larger birds and its instinct or something that black moving shadow scares the hell out of birds making them avoid the area.
So in summary, black windmills would be longest lasting, white and red dynamic LEDs would be the aviation safest with white paint being a distant second safest, and black shadows scare birds away.
Ideally I think if money and energy were no object for solely technological reasons you'd paint the blades black during the day to scare away birds then use dynamic red and white LED lighting on the blades to scare away 747s at night.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday August 28 2020, @02:53PM (4 children)
While it's all well and good to make sure a 747 can see said windmills, you're likely going to die, if visibility of the windmills matters at all for a 747.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday August 28 2020, @05:29PM (3 children)
Well sure it matters in fog or if you're off course enough. Also the lighted and painted towers are great navigation points on aviation maps.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday August 28 2020, @05:48PM (2 children)
Ahh.., I guess they're a lot taller than I imagined. Still, doing course corrections for something 300 to 700 feet off the ground, when your average cruising height is 30k feet. Sounds to me like something catastrophic had happened already. Still, if you had a breath of a chance to lay it down on it's belly, it'd be best not to do so in a field of Wind Turbines.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday September 01 2020, @12:54PM (1 child)
Yeah in the civilized east. Out west in the mountains this is an issue.
The problem is electrical companies, given infinitely cheap land, would make the most money building generation downtown right where its used, and same pressure pushes airports to be next to the city. So plenty of planes fly in close proximity to farms. Planes have been flying around radio transmitter towers and water towers and smoke stacks for decades.
"In theory" using ultra high voltage DC transmission lines we could power NYC from a wind farm in Wyoming, but in practice its shorter range.
Well, where I live, plenty of farmers rent out their land for windmills, so ironically if you want a tree free essentially unpopulated mechanically leveled nearly perfectly flat for a mile around spot for an emergency landing, the best place is the wind farm. I mean, don't aim right at the tower itself, duh, but that field in general is probably the safest spot for miles around. So yeah more than a few general aviation little putt putt airplanes have landed at the local wind farm after an engine failure. Its a better spot than most.
I mean, heck, even the wind is generally constant and predictable at the wind farm WRT emergency landings, that's why the farm is there.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday September 02 2020, @04:27PM
I was meaning a 747 (which is what you suggested), a 747 isn't a puddle jumper that can land in a place like that. Sure, a small plane could land just about anywhere there's a nice flat surface.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"