Why are bird and bat studies necessary for projects that use the new generation turbines, which are much taller and have slower rotor speeds? Don these new turbines have much lower impacts to birds?
During California’s early wind energy development turbines were relatively small, spaced closely together, with the rotors spinning at high speeds. Wind turbines installed at the Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area, San Gorgonio, and Tehachapi during the 1980s generally had an installed capacity of around 100 kilowatts, reached heights of approximately 50 feet from the ground to the tip of the extended rotor, with blades spinning around 30 revolutions per minute (rpm). The new generation turbines (installed capacity around 1.5 megawatts) can be as tall as 450 feet from ground to rotor tip, with lower rotational speeds ranging from 15-27 rpm and tip speeds of approximately 200 feet/second. A number of researchers hypothesized that these new-generation, taller turbines would reduce wildlife impacts, in part because birds would be better able to see and avoid the slower-spinning blades. As studies have been conducted on “repowered” sites, where old turbines were replaced with the new, large
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