Hi-tech protection for birds at risk from SA's wind turbine farms

Daily Maverick

20-05-2025

What has been described as 'South Africa's first automated bird protection system' has gone live at Red Rocket's Brandvalley and Rietkloof wind farms, using AI-powered detection and turbine shutdowns to protect vulnerable species.
An automated bird protection system has been installed at Red Rocket's wind farms between the Western Cape and Northern Cape provinces in South Africa with advanced shutdown-on-demand functionality.
The system has been fully installed and is active at the 144MW Brandvalley and 144MW Rietkloof Wind Farms, which announced the commencement of commercial operations in April and are the first two projects under Round 5 of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP) to take on this technology.
Developed in partnership with international avian monitoring specialists Bioseco, the system uses advanced detection and shutdown-on-demand technology to prevent bird collisions with turbine blades – a persistent and controversial issue in wind energy development.
The system employs a suite of optical sensors and intelligent software to continuously monitor the airspace around selected turbines in bird-sensitive areas.
When a bird is detected approaching the danger zone, the system first deploys visual and audio deterrents. If the bird continues on a collision course, it automatically triggers a temporary shutdown of the turbine, allowing the bird to pass safely.
How it works is that modern camera-based systems, like the Bioseco Bird Protection System (BPS), mount six to eight stereovision modules on each turbine tower. The cameras monitor birds in real time, 360 degrees around the turbine.
Red Rocket's environmental and social manager, Ashleigh von der Heyden, and Sustainable Investments director Magdalena Michalowska Logan explained.
They said the system was configured to detect various sizes of bird species based on the wingspan of the species.
And when a bird (or flock) under conservation concern enters the 'danger zone', the system can initiate different tiers of mitigation, starting with non-harmful deterrent mechanisms, then moving on to automated turbine shutdown.
In case of automatic shutdown, Von Der Heyden and Logan said the relevant turbine received a 'stop command' and feathered its blades until the bird/birds had cleared the zone, after which it automatically restarted.
Depending on the turbine technology, they said it would typically take about 40 seconds to shut down the turbine.
This, in turn, was considered when sizing the trigger zone, along with bird species that would initiate such a command to shut the turbine down.
What they sought to ensure, according to Von Der Heyden and Logan, was that species of conservation concern were effectively protected through the implementation of tailored, fit-for-purpose mitigation measures – whether technological, operational or human-led across all their wind farm operations.
'This represents a huge leap forward over the current traditional, manually operated methods,' said Red Rocket CEO Matteo Brambilla in a media release.
Bioseco's commercial manager, Magda Bielawska, echoed the sentiment: 'Our mission is not only to protect birds, but to enhance wind-energy production through intelligent environmental integration.'
Why bird collisions matter
Wind energy's rapid expansion in South Africa – driven by the REIPPPP – has brought both environmental benefits and new challenges.
While wind farms help reduce fossil fuel dependence and curb greenhouse gas emissions, they can also pose significant risks to bird populations.
A 2017 report by BirdLife South Africa, reviewing the first operational wind farms under REIPPPP, found that diurnal raptors accounted for 36% of recorded fatalities, with songbirds making up 26%. Notably, threatened species such as the blue crane, Verreaux's eagle, martial eagle and black harrier were among those killed by turbine collisions.
The mean fatality rate was estimated at 4.1 birds per turbine per year, placing South Africa within the range observed in North America and Europe, but with particular concern for local species that may be more vulnerable due to their limited ranges or conservation status.
The report's authors stressed that, while the data were preliminary and based on a limited number of sites and years, a precautionary approach was warranted:
'The best mitigation technique is clearly the avoidance of any fatalities, however, this is not always possible and the importance of continuous monitoring during operation is therefore of utmost importance.'
Bird collisions at wind farms in SA
Daily Maverick previously reported that birds from at least 200 species have had fatal collisions with wind turbines in South Africa, and that almost every wind farm in the country has recorded fatalities of threatened and priority species.
In earlier rounds of renewable energy development under the REIPPPP, avian protection relied primarily on manual observation and/or human-led shutdown-on-demand protocols.
Von Der Heyden and Logan said these methods remained a valuable tool in a broader mitigation strategy and continue to be used where appropriate at their wind farms.
But they said that the industry had evolved significantly, as had scientific understanding, regulatory guidance and stakeholder expectations.
'The deployment of the Bioseco system is not intended to replace traditional methods, but to complement them – enhancing real-time responsiveness and contributing valuable data to support long-term monitoring outcomes,' they said.
The teams assess each project individually to determine the most appropriate combination of mitigation measures based on the species present, site conditions and the best available science.
BirdLife South Africa (BLSA) has been looking at an estimated rate of around 3-4 birds killed per turbine per year (across all species) with more than 1,400 turbines operating in 2023.
According to BLSA, one wind farm reported almost 50 birds killed per turbine per year, mostly swifts (ie not threatened).
Against this backdrop, BLSA welcomed the implementation of shutdown on demand at wind farms and believed most facilities in South Africa should adopt this strategy, either using technology or observers.
Samantha Ralston-Paton, the birds and renewable energy project manager at BLSA, said this was an important tool to help address bird collisions.
BLSA will soon publish a handbook on Shutdown on Demand (both technology-led and observer-led) to help developers, bird specialists and decision-makers implement shutdown on demand effectively.
'Not a silver bullet'
But, Ralston-Paton warned, shutdown on demand was not a silver bullet. 'It should never replace careful site selection and avoidance of areas where there is a high risk of bird collisions (eg near eagle nests),' she said.
The effectiveness of technology-led shutdown on demand will be influenced by the technology used, site, and species — ie the topography, number and location of devices installed, size of the target species and detection range.
Red Rocket acknowledged that the technology was not a comprehensive answer, but said that it performed a mitigation and monitoring function that superseded humans' capabilities and was not as weather dependent as human-based monitoring.
'This technology is promising for the ecological benefit of bird species that live in and around wind turbine facilities,' Von Der Heyden and Logan said.
Being the first technology in South Africa used solely for mitigating bird strikes, they said the technology would be monitored by independent bird specialists and the Red Rocket Team.
Previously, Ralston-Paton said that when it came to birds, the issue was not so much the impact of individual wind farms, but the cumulative effect of multiple wind farms, added to existing pressures on many bird species.
She used the example of the black harrier, which is classified as endangered. The actual number of black harriers lost thus far may not seem huge, but increasing the fatality rate by just 3-5 birds a year would accelerate its path to extinction, Ralston-Paton said.
'The population is already really small, with around 1,200 mature individuals,' she said.
The South African National Biodiversity Institute (Sanbi) says the proliferation of wind farms in the core black harrier breeding areas of the Western Cape coast to the Northern Cape, as well as in the newly discovered summer range in Lesotho, meant that harriers may be affected at both ends of their migratory cycle.
They said that this was an unknown threat, but that the species was high on the collision-sensitivity list of the Birds and Wind Energy Specialist Group.
'It is important to keep in mind that without mitigation, impacts could be ongoing for the 20-year lifespan of a wind farm, and we have plans to increase the number of turbines in SA (and therefore risk to birds) significantly over the next 10 years,' Ralston-Paton said.
Von Der Heyden and Logan said that they recognised that the bird species most at risk of turbine collisions were typically long-lived, slow to reproduce and wide-ranging. This meant that even a small number of fatalities could have significant population-level impacts, as mentioned by BLSA.
To address this, they apply a multi-layered mitigation approach that includes meticulous turbine micro-siting, advanced bird tracking technologies and adaptive shutdown-on-demand protocols that respond in real time to site-specific and seasonal conditions.
'These efforts are complemented by transparent data sharing and the appointment of independent avifaunal specialists to provide ongoing oversight,' Von Der Heyden and Logan said.
As for what Red Rocket learnt from this deployment, Von Der Heyden and Logan said they found that the automation system reduced downtime while improving protection.
'Manual spotters often shut down turbines for up to a 10-minute block. The camera-based, per turbine approach at Brandvalley and Rietkloof should see a reduction in unnecessary stops while still mitigating potential bird collisions, translating into both conservation and production gains,' they said.
They were calibrating the system to minimise downtime, and since it was a first in South Africa, Red Rocket said they would monitor the system soon to better understand the reduction of downtime for turbines. DM