Numbers Behind Bird Friendly Solar Thermal

How many birds are we talking about here? 1000/day? 1/day?

Maybe dozens, nothing honest birders worry about. This is something a winger got off of the Watts Up With That denier site.

Still it's an interesting academic problem.

Without researching [cheating] do you think the original control system can be adapted to avoid birds w/o any hardware changes other than the addition of the radar/sonar?

Bret Cahill

Dozens... implies more than one dozen, so at least 24 birds/day, huh.

Without knowing anything about the hardware specs? Nope.

Bonus points for having your software recognize a bird, versus say aircraft.

Michael

So... you'd need a radar system capable of detecting the location and velocity of birds. How much would that cost?

I suppose you could divide the mirrors into say four large groups. For example, If a bird arrives from the east, have the western mirrors (which are pointing east, say) re-direct their light.

What do you do if you have birds approaching from both the east and west though?

Not much compared to a 2 billion plant but more than what a few dozen birds are worth.

With 170,000 mirrors they may already be using some kind of target/feedback system to keep the mirrors properly positioned. This could eliminate a lot of individual programming for each location.

The ones flying South in the spring or North in the fall are obviously confused and probably wouldn't survive anyway.

So ignore those birds.

Put a small explosive charge on each mirror and splatter the ones that might hit the birds. Reaction time will be fast, you don't have to redesign the tracking drives, and there are longterm economic benefits as well.