Wildlife Acoustics’ SMART System Protects Bats

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. Sign up now
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show? Email us! Welcome to Uptime Spotlight, shining Light on
Wind Energy's brightest innovators. This is the Progress Powering
Tomorrow. 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,