Poster: Wasted Curtailment or Smart Curtailment for Bats
27 Sep 17
4:45 PM
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5:45 PM
Tracks:
Poster Presentation
Twenty five to 75% of bat curtailment hours are wasted. This waste occurs because, even under low wind speed conditions, bat exposure to the turbine blades is not constant across time. So,while it is broadly true that curtailing turbines on low wind speed nights will reduce bat fatalties, it is also true that wind speed alone is a poor predictor of fatalty risk due to the temporally clumped nature of bat activity. This is why studies report that many low fatality rates on low wind speed nights. A smarter approach is to curtail turbines only when wind speeds are low AND bats are at risk of collision. This Smart Curtailment approach was tested at an operating wind facility in Wisconsin. It reduced bat fatalities by 83% and simultaneously reduced the number MWh lost to curtailment (90MWh vs. 150 MWh at 5.5m/s).