An award winning tracking system installed at a Tasmanian wind farm has been found to cut eagle deaths by more than four fifths by a US study.
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Goldwind Australia had IdentiFlight units installed at its Cattle Hill Wind Farm in the Central Highlands to reduce wedge-tailed eagle deaths from collisions with moving blades.
The system uses mounted optical units and algorithms to recognise bird types and shuts particular turbines as required to avoid eagle collisions.
Research from a study at a wind farm in Wyoming published in the Journal of Applied Ecology found using IdentiFlight cut eagle deaths by 82 per cent.
"These results show that using the IdentiFlight system can lessen numbers of fatalities of eagles at wind energy facilities, reducing the conflict between wind energy and raptor conservation," report lead author Chris McClure, the director of global conservation science at the Peregrine Fund, said.
"As this technology continues to develop and improve, it has the potential to greatly impact raptor conservation around the globe."
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The researchers said collision-caused animal deaths at wind power facilities created a "green versus green" conflict between conservation and renewable energy.
The Cattle Hill Wind Farm has 48 170 metre turbines and was completed in 2020.
Goldwind said it provided enough energy to power 63,500 Tasmanian homes.
The company won the innovation category at this year's Clean Energy Australia Awards for its IdentiFlight system.
The wind farm is jointly owned by Goldwind and Powechina and employs nine full-time staff.
It was the first wind farm in Australia to use IdentiFlight.
Earlier this year, IdentiFlight said the system had tracked and documented more than 2.2 million "eagle tracks" at projects around the world.
"One of the advantages of the IdentiFlight system is its ability to learn from eagles and other protected bird species around the world," chief technology officer Carlos Jorquera said.
"By leveraging artificial intelligence technologies, such as machine learning and convolutional neural networks, the system continuously improves as the data set grows."
A convolutional neural network analyses visual imagery.