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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday August 27 2020, @02:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the simple-changes dept.

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)


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  • (Score: 1) by fakefuck39 on Saturday August 29 2020, @12:12AM

    by fakefuck39 (6620) on Saturday August 29 2020, @12:12AM (#1043560)

    No one is outlawing wind turbines. Are you telling me that if you could have a window that's functionally the same, you would still opt to have a bird break it every 5 years?

    You're painting the turbine anywise. Use a different color. An no, black won't make it last less. Whatever damage is done by the heat which is immediately dissipated by the wind, it's less damage than the impact the blade takes hitting a bird.

    White is used simply because it's the cheapest paint right now. Ford used black paint because it was the cheapest paint back then. But when you have this million dollar turbine, $10 more for paint on does not raise its price.

    When you have a field of 50 turbines, in a fairly small area, you're going to have like 100 dead birds a year. and after 20 years (the lifespan of a turbine), you'll have a nasty smelly 2000-bird decomposing cesspool of rotting flesh, insects, and bird carcasses covering the whole area. And it seems you can avoid all that by choosing a different paint color, without doing any extra work.

    But you enjoy your broken window.