Birds Dying Due To Solar Panels

Bird droppings at the base of a solar panel.

Birds dying due to solar panels.

Fish and wildlife study earlier this year found only 233 bird deaths at three different solar farms in california over the course of two years. Yes birds have died at solar photovoltaic projects some of them from crashing into panels or other infrastructure. Though damage to the solar panels is minimal officials. This is even a problem for solar panel facilities which see up to 138 000 bird deaths per year in the us from collisions with equipment.

Thousands of birds are flying into a new solar mega trap in the middle of california s mojave desert killing the avian lot at a rate of up to one bird every two minutes according to the u s. And a novelist could pen a murder mystery titled. Death by renewable energy. Unlike typical solar farms that use photovoltaic panels on a large scale the site at ivanpah is built on entirely different principles.

As for coal those bird death numbers came from a peer reviewed study in the journal renewable energy. The diversity of birds dying at these solar facilities and the differences among sites suggest that there is no simple fix to reduce avian mortality the federal report states. Dead insects and possibly birds fall to the ground in trails of smoke that plant workers call streamers after flying too close to a giant boiler at the ivanpah solar power station near the. Bird deaths from solar farms have been estimated to be relatively low though a u s.

To catch sunlight the plant uses 5. Well it s mainly due to the plant s overall design and location. But actually implementing the system at a solar facility is fraught with technical challenges. This is called a lake effect birds have been found dead wounded or stranded at several solar projects in the desert.

Another problem with large solar farms is that birds sometimes mistake the glossy blue expanse of solar panels for bodies of water and try to land on them. But there s hardly any science examining how many birds deaths are caused solar.