The obvious solution would be to either make the windmills more visible, like the ones that used to dot the landscape 150 years ago. There's one along those lines located just off the I-25 freeway, just south of 6th avenue which seems to have been installed as an art project. It's highly visible, having a large number of blades, closely spaced like the intake of a jet engine, but painted a very visible white color so as to be hard to miss.
I'd be willing to guess that this rig has bagged very few birds.
This is too easy.
Overthinking the problem to a fare-the-well,
folks have concluded, with the help of government monies, that the best way to prevent bird kills is to fit each 400 foot high windmill with a radar set which can detect when a large bird is flying towards it, and add software to stop the mill until the bird is safely past the device.
And you thought the availability of power from these things was spotty before.
5 comments:
I thought this was a joke, but no.....
Merle
Does the windmill produce enough wattage to power the radar?
Wouldn't it be a something if the radar burned out the birds brains? I wonder what the greenies would have to complain about then - their expensive fix did more harm than good. Think "unintended consequences".
Also, for the large commercial windmills, what do you think it would take to stop those blades quickly? Possible the the electric brakes would use more energy than the plant could produce. Net result - a reduction in the power available in the grid.
Merle
I think Merle's on to something here. Instead of stopping a big, heavy windmill why not just put a laser on top of the mill and zap the birds before they can damage the mill?
THe multi blade mills like the one pictured aren't really all that efficient.
THe most efficient is, believe it or not, a single blade, but those have balance issues, so the three blade is the best so far.
I doubt the one pictured would make 500 watts. Not enough to power the radar to save the birds.....
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