By Heath Waldorf, principal consultant, Bird Control Advisory
Think about all of your calculations for productiveness, the worth of that power each in sellable energy and Inexperienced Vitality manufacturing credit (SRECs/TRECs) for the following 15 years. You’ve figured the variety of panels that match on the roof, the kind of racking to safe all of it, the standard of the inverters you intend to make use of, anticipated upkeep prices — all the pieces all compiled as a report back to current to an investor. You’ve obtained it? Good. Now think about a flock of seagulls flying in by means of the open window and pooping throughout that well-contrived doc.
Pest birds could cause the next issues for rooftop photo voltaic arrays:
- Manufacturing drops by 10%, 20% and even 50%
- Added prices for cleansing
- Everlasting harm from sizzling spots
- Shattered panels from dropped particles
- Employees unable to carry out upkeep
- Blocked drains and roof leaks
Hen issues are most frequently discovered geographically alongside the U.S. coastal areas and within the neighborhood of the Nice Lakes. Larger-risk areas embody city environments, these in migratory paths and people in proximity to smaller our bodies of water together with rivers, lakes and wetlands.
Typically tied to water areas, meals sources additionally embody landfills or waste switch stations, meals producers and even city and industrial areas the place rubbish is plentiful.
Birds are drawn to the heat panels generate and infrequently to the shelter beneath arrays which protects nests and fledglings (infants) from the weather. The panels heat up over the course of a day. Birds return to their night roosts to search out them good and comfortable.
It’s also usually the case that birds are drawn to a selected web site quite than the photo voltaic array. When investigating a rooftop location for potential improvement of a PV system, be weary of websites which have proof of fowl points. Whereas birds could keep away from the location through the exercise of building/set up, they may rapidly return to their long-standing residence as soon as the flurry of exercise has disappeared.
Strategies to get rid of bird-related panel soiling
A budget and straightforward strategies merely don’t work. Propane cannons, spinning shiny discs, iridescent streamers and audio techniques (each ultrasonic and audible) all show ineffective long run.
For a very long time, there was solely answer for hovering birds in vast space flat roof conditions — gullwire elevated grid techniques that create a synthetic ceiling over your rooftop utilizing poles, {hardware} and both chrome steel cable or monofilament erected as a grid spaced wherever from 10’ on heart to 25’ on heart. It’s based mostly on ideas of fowl conduct that hovering birds don’t wish to fly below issues. Elevating the gullwire grid utilizing poles provides accessibility and negates journey hazards for upkeep.
However a brand new possibility for defense is now obtainable.
Laser know-how has been used to scare migratory birds from fruit crops within the area and meals manufacturing services for years. Solely not too long ago has the know-how been utilized to industrial roofs with photo voltaic arrays.
A tool that appears like a safety digital camera is mounted in place over the affected space. Every custom-programmed unit patrols the roof with a inexperienced laser beam that birds see as a risk. Birds see the entire beam as a stable object coming towards them making them transfer to security. The system operates in user-determined patterns at outlined occasions to maximise effectiveness in response to fowl conduct and for security.
Lasers have been proven to cut back fowl populations by as much as 90%, silently and at a small fraction of the price of a gullwire grid system.
When ought to measures be applied?
In case your web site already has fowl points, the time to take motion is now! The longer an issue stands, the more difficult it’s to displace a inhabitants. There are caveats when coping with protected species with particular legal guidelines that dictate how and when cures might be utilized. As well as, you shouldn’t take motion through the birds’ nesting season and elevating their younger. They change into territorial and aggressive about their house and don’t reply to threats meant to discourage their presence.
Birds ought to actually be a key a part of a challenge’s Soiling Mitigation Plan. In higher-risk areas, deploy an answer preventatively as an insurance coverage coverage in opposition to the danger of manufacturing drop and cleansing prices. The danger of kit harm and cleansing prices rack up with no answer in place.
Might mitigation techniques be constructed into your preliminary improvement and integrated with the federal government incentives and tax rebates? It could be higher to by no means have a fowl downside within the first place — particularly if the prices might be discounted. With mounted and restricted time as an SREC/TREC producer, the facility misplaced to fowl droppings just isn’t recoverable.
Heath Waldorf is a Hen Mitigation Advisor with 20 years expertise defending buildings and buildings from pest fowl issues. He has labored on tasks across the globe for main architects & engineers, actual property builders, energy corporations, and photo voltaic O&M companies. He might be reached by means of his website.
