Gulf of Suez wind farm seeks to ‘save pelicans’ with radar

Bloomberg

The Egyptian shores of the Gulf of Suez are becoming increasingly attractive to renewable-energy investors seeking to take advantage of the area’s strong, steady winds. That’s a growing problem for the millions of pelicans, white storks, raptors and other birds that fly by every year while migrating between Eurasia and East Africa.
The 200-megawatt Gulf of el Zayt wind warm is testing a system that uses radar to minimize bird-turbine collisions, according to BirdLife International, a UK-based conservation group.
“There’s a bottleneck at the Gulf of Suez, where all the birds pass,” BirdLife’s Edward Perry said in a presentation on the Migratory Soaring Birds Project, at United Nations climate change talks in Bonn, Germany. “This happens to overlap with prime real estate for wind energy farms so there are significant challenges.”
The radar technology will detect when flocks of birds are approaching and can shut down the turbines to avoid collisions and deaths. If the system works, it may be used more widely in Africa and the Middle East, where there’s been a boom in renewable energy investment. The Migratory Soaring Birds project is working in 11 countries within the Rift Valley and Red Sea “flyway.” About 2 million birds fly between Eurasia and Africa each year, Perry said.
Egypt has committed to secure a fifth of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, with 12 percent from wind, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.