Birds Dying Due To Solar Panels

Bird droppings at the base of a solar panel.

Birds dying due to solar panels.

Death by renewable energy. 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. A coroner could use these signs to establish the cause of mass bird death. To catch sunlight the plant uses 5.

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. 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. The sight of a bird being fried to death is so common at the ivanpah solar plant in california s mojave.

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. Though damage to the solar panels is minimal officials. This is called a lake effect birds have been found dead wounded or stranded at several solar projects in the desert. 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.

But actually implementing the system at a solar facility is fraught with technical challenges. And a novelist could pen a murder mystery titled. Bird deaths from solar farms have been estimated to be relatively low though a u s. But there s hardly any science examining how many birds deaths are caused solar.

Unlike typical solar farms that use photovoltaic panels on a large scale the site at ivanpah is built on entirely different principles. 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.