Show notes
Mona Doss from Wildlife Acoustics discusses how wind operators can address bat conservation and regulatory risks with their SMART System. Their technology uses acoustically triggered curtailment to protect bats while maximizing wind energy production.
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Allen Hall: let's get started with the challenge facing Wind operators today. the Tricolored bat is in serious trouble and it's creating regulatory risks for the wind industry. Can you walk us through what's happening and why this matters for wind operators?
Mona Doss: It matters because last fall, the US Fish and Wildlife introduced some, voluntary wooded guidelines for the tri-colored bat.
this, particular bat species population has, declined and is, primarily being affected by two factors. one being, something called, white nose that's affecting many back. Species across, north America. But the other is for some reason the tricolor bats. And [00:01:00] we're still looking at a lot of bat researchers, and I'll leave that to the bat biologist to address more specifically.
but they are, being affected very much by, wood turbine mortality. So it's gonna be a balance between trying to address back conservation as well as the needs for energy production, which we all want from a, wind farm.
Allen Hall: And the white nose fungus is a really deadly disease for the tricolor bats.
I, I've seen numbers upwards of 90%, mortality rate, when that fungus, affects them. And that fungus is pretty much exists where they live. it's something hard to, stop.
Mona Doss: Yeah, there's been a lot of great research by, various universities and VE Conservation International here in North America, trying to understand the nature of the fungus.
And, how there might be possibilities to, treat, bats that are exposed to that fungus. All of that at this point is still very experimental. but that fungus has wa out many, [00:02:00] bat ber macular of various species. You might have had bat ber macular that had tens of thousands of bats that are literally just down to a few dozen.
Joel Saxum: That's extreme. That's, that's like wiping out entire populations, entire ecosystems.
Mona Doss: It's very extreme. so there's been a lot of monitoring for the progress of this fungus. It was first founded in New York a few years ago. It's been slowly migrating, towards the west. so you've got the fungus affecting the bats and you've got, the demand for more clean energy, with wind farms that are also contributing to bat mortality.
And these poor bat species are suffering from both sides at the moment.
Allen Hall: It's very serious. Mona, what are the consequences for wind operators who don't proactively address this sort of dual threat to the. White nose syndrome, wind turbines, and fungus. obviously they're gonna be asking wind turbine operators to do something.
What does that look like?
Mona Doss: Yeah. right now, [00:03:00] when the, wind farm operators are going in front of environmental regulators to, get their permitting all approved, there's a negotiation that's occurring between balancing the bat species protect protection based on maybe pre-construction, present servings for bats.
And the need for energy production. But as more and more bat species get listed as their populations are declining and they become species of concern, you're gonna have an increase in, what's called blanket curtailment. so that typically is looking at a site and, requiring the operator to pause turbine operation during certain times of the year under certain wind conditions, regardless of whether or not there's actually a bat present in that location.
Allen Hall: So they're setting up time blocks where you have to slow down the turbines or stop the turbines, basically.
Mona Doss: Exactly.
Allen Hall: Where is this happening right now? What part of the us?
Mona Doss: Yeah. a lot of it is occurring in the Midwest, where there are several already species at risk. [00:04:00] the Indiana bat, the Northern Longyear bat, several species have a requirement for pausing turbine operation at those wind farms.
depending on the locations and weather. Those species were identified as being potentially in the area during the pre-construction surveys.
Joel Saxum: So we've seen some of these, like blanket, like I like the term blanket curtailments in the eu, right? For different, avian species, different bat species.
And you're starting to see a lot of solutions pop up over there, but mainly they're driven by regulation, right? So the difference here in the states, I guess is, Usually regulation for birds or bats doesn't pop up unless they cross state lines. Then it becomes a federal issue, and then the feds will regulate something like that's like the, the Federal Migratory Bird Act.
They weren't, really monitored or not monitored, regulated at a federal level until, oh, these are crossing state lines. It's a federal thing. so the US Fish and Wildlife [00:05:00] Service, they've put some, guidance. Do we see? And guidance and there's like violations, civil penalties, ESA violations.
Do we see actual more regulation coming down the pipeline for this?
Mona Doss: I suspect that there will, currently, for instance, with the tricolored BAT is considered voluntary guidance. but more and more species are getting listed. So you mentioned the eu. In the eu, eu all bat species are protected. but even in North America, outside of the US and Canada, Ontario has proposed.
New, guidance for bat species. At risk. That right now has a option, two options. One option is the common approach, which means you're doing glyco, curtail up to seven meters per second during certain times of the year. Or the alternative would be approaches similar to, like acoustics produces, which is something called acoustically trigger curtailment.
And with a TC we are primarily, [00:06:00] integrating with the wind fire systems. And when we detect a bat that meets certain activity levels or criteria, we communicate with that wind farm and say, Hey, bats are here. Let's let you know that. And then the wind farm can feather those blades and pause operation.
Allen Hall: So the US Fish and Wildlife has issued that guidance. It's voluntary at the minute, but it may turn into, something you have to do here shortly. And in that guidance, there are three different approaches to dealing with this bad issue. Really different, scenarios honestly. But wildlife acoustics has developed the smart system, which addresses all of this.
Walk us through how the smart system fits into this regulatory framework.
Mona Doss: Yeah, sure. under that voluntary guidelines, there is. Is a scenario of blanket curtailment. one of the options. The second option is an algorithmic curtailment and [00:07:00] US fish and Wildlife has 10 words trying to describe what, algorithmic curtailment is.
But it's basically looking at, historical acoustic data, bad activity on a wind farm, creating models to predict when turbines should be paused to minimize that mortality. And the third being, what we're calling acoustically trigger curtailment. So basically, we have technology that is, constantly listening for bats.
Bats are vocalizing in the ultrasonic range beyond the range of human hearing. we're the primary manufacturer of bat detectors worldwide. This is our specialty, and we're listening for those bats so that as they're approaching the wind farm, we can signal to the, wind turbine systems that the bat is present and they can then.
Pause or feather their blades to slowly pause operational turbines until we can then lower a flag and say, guess what? It's been [00:08:00] 10 minutes, the bats are now gone. Kick up your gears and start all over again.
Joel Saxum: That seems like a much better approach than a blanket curtailment, especially because, we're looking in the United States at these a hundred, 120 turbine wind farms.
If you have to shut that whole wind farm down at one time as a blanket curtailment for a few hours a day or a few, like I would assume it's at dusk or something of that sort. That's a lot of revenue loss as well. So if you can shut down just portions of the wind farm where the bats have been detected, that's a big change in operations.
that's a big revenue change too.
Mona Doss: It's a big revenue change. In a case study, in a turbine in, England, we found that if you implemented a blanket cur talent regime, you were pausing operation when bats were even present. comparing a. Blanket curtailment approach to an acoustically triggered curtailment approach at that particular turbine.
we found that from an energy production [00:09:00] perspective, you had 10 times less pausing of the turbine with acoustically triggered curtailment as opposed to blanket curtailment. And that translates to dollar dollars and more energy production with a minimized, impact on bat mortality.
Allen Hall: Okay, that's interesting.
So you're listening for the. Bat noise. Are you listening on every turbine or are you trying to echo locate bats? Like bats? Are echo locating themselves? Are you using basically a bat like system to detect bats? What, how does this work from a system standpoint?
Mona Doss: it certainly could go on every turbine, but it doesn't have to.
A lot of wind farms, especially the larger wind farms,