Identiflight and Windfarms?

As most of us know, wind farms do kill some raptors, and other birds and bats. But technology is contributing to the conservation of eagles at windfarms with IdentiFlight®, a machine vision system being tested at the Top of the World windfarm in Rolling Hills, WY. Tom Hiester, Senior Vice-President, Strategy, for RES (Renewable Energy Systems), leads the IdentiFlight® technology development, and he will describe the technology, its status of deployment, and testing. Tom has nearly 40 years in the renewable energy business as a project and technology developer. IdentiFlight is high-precision optical technology used to detect eagles and protect them from collisions with rotating wind turbine blades. Automatic detection of birds, and the determination if it is an eagle, occur within seconds for eagles flying anywhere within a one kilometer hemisphere around the IdentiFlight tower. If an eagle’s speed and flight path indicate risk of collision with a wind turbine, a signal is generated to shut down that specific wind turbine, so that the probability of impact with rotating turbine blades is substantially reduced or eliminated. By empowering wind farm operators with signals to make highly targeted, informed and objective curtailment decisions, unnecessary and costly interruptions are avoided and legally protected species are conserved. The eagle photo was taken with the IndentiFlight system at about 700 meters. The program will be on Friday, April 14, 2017 at 7 PM at the Oil & Gas Conservation Commission Building at 2211 King Blvd. And as always, the program is free and open to the public!!