Why do solar farms kill birds?
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Why do solar farms kill birds?
Jumping Trout, LLC
(Wired August, 2020) Leave it to us to let you know of a problem that you didn't know existed. Solar farms, populated by utilitiy companies as a way to supply clean energy, are finding bird carcasses litering their grounds. For something that's considered environmentally friendly, it seems this addition is having the opposite effect. Why?
In 2013, a group of utilities, academics, and environmental organizations came together to form the Avian Solar Working Group to develop strategies to mitigate avian deaths at solar facilities in the US. For something that had little to no prior research, they had to collect a lot of data. In 2016, a first-of-its-kind study estimated that the hundreds of utility scale solar farms around the US may kill nearly 140,000 birds annually. That's not a lot considering that fossil-fuel power plants kill about 100 times more, but the number of birds killed by solar farms is rising at an alarming rate.
This year, the Department of Energy awarded a team of researchers at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinios a $1.3 million contract to develop an artificial intelligence platform dedicated to studying avian behavior at large scale solar facilities around the US. The data gathered by this system wil help ornithologists figure out why birds are dying.
What are your theories?
Find the whole story here: https://www.wired.com/story/why-do-solar-farms-kill-birds-call-in-the-ai-bird-watcher/
In 2013, a group of utilities, academics, and environmental organizations came together to form the Avian Solar Working Group to develop strategies to mitigate avian deaths at solar facilities in the US. For something that had little to no prior research, they had to collect a lot of data. In 2016, a first-of-its-kind study estimated that the hundreds of utility scale solar farms around the US may kill nearly 140,000 birds annually. That's not a lot considering that fossil-fuel power plants kill about 100 times more, but the number of birds killed by solar farms is rising at an alarming rate.
This year, the Department of Energy awarded a team of researchers at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinios a $1.3 million contract to develop an artificial intelligence platform dedicated to studying avian behavior at large scale solar facilities around the US. The data gathered by this system wil help ornithologists figure out why birds are dying.
What are your theories?
Find the whole story here: https://www.wired.com/story/why-do-solar-farms-kill-birds-call-in-the-ai-bird-watcher/
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