Wildlife, like bats, birds, and whales, live in specific habitats where they thrive, and each species plays a unique and important role in nature. Bats, for example, eat bugs that are destructive to agriculture and pollinate more than 700 plants, many of which humans used for food and medicine. Whales help maintain a stable food chain and help to assure certain animal species don’t overpopulate the ocean. 

But wind technologies, such as spinning turbine blades, pose risks to nearby wildlife. The Department of Energy’s Wind Energy Technologies Office (WETO)—while focused on advancing wind energy production—is committed to understanding and mitigating the potential impacts of wind energy development on the environment.

PNNL wind researchers are helping WETO meet its goal by deploying a variety of technologies and resources related to wildlife patterns and behaviors. For example, radio frequency tags and transmitters track bird and bat behavior. These tracking data help wind energy developers make informed decisions about the siting of wind plant operations and also shorten environmental permitting time. 

Another technology developed by PNNL engineers, called ThermalTracker-3D, is an open source software that allows continuous monitoring of birds and bats at remote offshore wind locations. ThermalTracker provides three-dimensional views of bird and bat flight patterns in daylight, nighttime, and limited visibility conditions, gleaning data about flight altitude and range as well as the physical attributes of species. Data obtained from this software provide information that wind plant developers and operators need to make well-informed technology investments. 

With funding from the WETO, PNNL and the United States Geological Survey are partnering to develop a radar system that can be deployed from a buoy to measure bird and bat abundances and behaviors at offshore locations. The new radar system that can be deployed from a buoy, such as one of WETO’s lidar buoys, managed by PNNL. The new radar system will be designed to overcome the key challenges that make it difficult to detect flying animals over open water. Ultimately, the technology can be used before construction of a wind farm to inform siting decisions or after construction to identify changes in bird movement pattern. 

Another resource helping to speed deployment of wind energy is a database called Tethys. This free searchable database, developed and maintained by PNNL wind and marine energy experts, is a source and repository for the research community to exchange information and data about the environmental impacts of wind and marine technologies. Tethys benefits wind project developers, who can review environmental monitoring reports and monitoring and mitigation technologies. Tethys also helps regulatory agency staff to streamline the permitting processes because all pertinent information is easily accessible and in one database. Tethys also hosts products from an international collaboration of 13 countries called Working Together to Resolve Environmental Effects of Wind Energy, or WREN.

PNNL is co-leading the U.S. Offshore Wind Synthesis of Environmental Effects Research (SEER) project which aims to synthesize key issues and disseminate existing knowledge about environmental effects, inform applicability to U.S. waters, and prioritize future research needs. The project produced seven research briefs that review the state of the knowledge on stressor/receptor interactions; provide evaluation of technical considerations; and describe monitoring methods and technologies, mitigation measures, and cumulative impacts on topics such as underwater noise effects on marine life, bat and bird interactions, risk to marine life from marine debris and floating cable systems, benthic disturbances from foundations and anchors, and more. Additionally, four webinars were held to disseminate findings presented in research briefs to the offshore wind industry.