A New Study About Seabirds and Offshore Wind Turbines May Surprise You
Michelle Lewis
Swedish power giant Vattenfall did a two-year, €3 million study of seabirds at an offshore wind farm off Scotland – here’s what it found.
5 Mar 2023
The study’s findings: Not a single collision between a bird and a rotor blade was recorded.
Vattenfall says that the herring gulls and kittiwakes showed horizontal avoidance further away from rotor blades, 90-110 meters (295-361 feet) and 140-160 meters (459-525 feet), respectively, while the gannets and great black-backed gulls only exhibited avoidance behavior at 40 and 50 meters (131 and 164 feet) from the tips of rotor blades.
And if you just muttered under your breath, “Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?” Vattenfall says it’s got video evidence to back up its study’s findings – ten thousand videos of birds flying around Aberdeen Offshore Wind Farm