Wind turbine shutdown-on-demand using radar - Progress and challenges

Wind turbines pose several potential risks for birds: loss of habitat, the barrier effect and most importantly collision-related mortality. Due to the increasing demand for the construction of wind farms, mitigating the risks of bird mortality is needed. This, in practice, requires collecting vast amounts of data on bird flight directions, flight altitude, species and behaviour in the vicinity of wind farms. In some cases, it might even be required to shutdown (a part} of the wind farm during mass bird migration in order to reduce bird mortality to an acceptable level. Of course, the use of radar is a powerful method to acquire this data, both for collecting data even before construction as well as for determining the high-risk periods during deployment. Our systems have been installed for this purpose in wind farms during the past years. The most recent project in which our radar is used is in the Eemshaven by our customer 'Bureau Waardenburg' in close collaboration with the University of Amsterdam. In this short presentation, we will present an overview of this project, the technological advances in our recently developed radar and how these two meet. We will present our technological challenges in suppressing sea, precipitation and turbine clutter by showing some real-life examples.