Announcing TIMR to Protect Bats and Improve Uptime at Wind Farms

rebat timr illustration web

Gainesville, FL — Normandeau launched its latest technology for bats and wind turbines at the AWEA Project Siting and Compliance Conference in Charleston, South Carolina. TIMR is an automated curtailment tool that improves uptime while protecting bats at wind facilities.

TIMR uses onsite wind speed and real-time bat activity to determine when to temporarily curtail turbines. In a recent study funded by EPRI and hosted by We Energies, Normandeau found that TIMR reduced total curtailment hours by 48% (172 versus 361 hours above 3.5m/s) compared to wind-speed-only curtailment. It also reduced total bat mortality by 83% and Myotis mortality by 90%.

The presence of low wind speed is not predictive of bat fatalities. Although research has shown that modifying turbine operations can reduce total bat fatalities by 42% to 93%, especially during low wind speed conditions (typically <5.5 or <6.5 m/s; Arnett et al 2011; Arnett et al 2013; Baerwald et al. 2009), there are many hours with low wind speed and little to no bat mortality.

"Curtailing based on wind speed alone is not an optimum solution, because there are hours in which there are no conservation benefits for bats," said Crissy Sutter, Vice President and Bat Team Lead at Normandeau, "but the economic costs still accrue." TIMR resolves this by only curtailing turbines when a risk of bat fatalities is occurring.

For more information, visit the TIMR webpage

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