US Department of Energy fund research to track birds involved in solar panel collisions

Across the world, it is estimated that hundreds of millions of birds die as a result of collisions with man-made objects such as windows, telephone masts, wind turbines and planes engines. In many cases this is because the bird has seen a reflection of the sky in an object and not realised there was anything there at all.

Ok, that’s sad, you may be thinking, but how does that relate to solar? Well, as the popularity and frequency of solar panels increases across the globe, so do the amount of birds meeting their final moment during a collision with a solar panel. 

This problem has been particularly noted in the US, where estimates suggest over 130,000 birds a year die in collisions with solar equipment. So much so, that the key US governmental body the Department of Energy (DoE) have awarded a $1.3m grant to Argonne National Laboratory as they look to develop an automatic bird monitoring system to chart the impact of solar panels on avian life. Adam Szymanski, one of Argonne’s lead software engineers, shared his thoughts:

"We've come up with a camera system that can automatically detect a moving object in the area and then classify if it's a bird or not. Then, the system should be able to classify if the bird collided with anything or what other activity it's actually doing. This is all done using machine learning and computer vision. Drones usually have some kind of propeller that a computer can pick out. A bird flaps its wings as it's flying, so when its wings are out it's fairly recognisable as a bird. But when its wings are in (for example, when gliding) it essentially just looks like a black dot, so it becomes harder to classify.”

“The new bird detection model also differs in what it looks at. While the drone model monitored an empty sky, the cameras at solar facilities will be directed at the panels themselves. This brings more objects into the camera's line of "sight," which complicates the detection process. The number of birds that perish at solar panel facilities pales in comparison to other environmental calamities. But for a long time, we humans have put our needs above those of the natural world. Projects like this one, that combine conservation with renewable energy are vital because they are a tangible recognition that nature's wellbeing shouldn't be an afterthought.”

Anything that helps minimise any negative impacts of solar, allowing all of its positive attributes to come to the fore, has to be a good thing in our book, so we wish Argonne all the best in their endeavours.