The white-tailed eagle, Germany’s national bird and Europe’s largest bird of prey, prefers coastal areas and lakes as its hunting ground. If it breeds near a wind farm, operators often face considerable financial losses. This is because not a single wind turbine will turn during this period – and that’s from March to September. Due to the strict legal requirements, blanket shutdowns like this are widespread.

The Husum-based start-up ProTecBird has demonstrated that species protection and the urgent expansion of wind energy need not exclude each other. Founded in 2021, the start-up worked in close cooperation with Rheinmetall to bring an officially certified anti-collision system onto market within just three years. The system can temporarily slow or stop individual turbines when protected species such as white-tailed eagles, red kites, peregrine falcons, or marsh harriers come dangerously close to rotating blades.

On target: Birds instead of drones

At the heart of the camera-based solution is a software component previously used exclusively in the military sector. Developed by Rheinmetall, the software operates as follows: when hostile drones or missiles are approaching, the software can automatically detect them from great distance on the horizon using complex real-time image processing. It can then track them dynamically using multiple cameras, classify them and calculate their trajectory in order to intervene in time in the event of a threat. Thanks to its sophisticated image processing algorithms, Rheinmetall’s surveillance and tracking software can be used in a wide range of domains: from air defence to naval systems, armoured vehicles, and now wildlife protection.

Orchestration of multiple software modules

Unlike drones or vehicles, birds can rapidly change shape significantly whilst flying and are highly agile in their movement. To meet these unique challenges, Rheinmetall’s various development teams had to adapt the software. This not only involved the algorithms and tracking functionalities, but also the interaction with the AI-based species recognition software and the ProTecBird control system which required joint programming and integration efforts.

The result of several years of development work is impressive. “Thanks to Rheinmetall’s software components, our AVES anti-collision system can detect birds at a distance of up to 1,000 metres, with an accuracy of nearly 99 percent,” emphasises Thorsten Heinzen, CEO of ProTecBird. The pan-tilt cameras mounted on the wind turbines are all interconnected. When the nearest camera zooms in on the animal, the species-specific AI is activated. The software can identify the species in a distance of around 800 metres. If it is a protected species, the integrated tracking module detects the bird’s altitude, flight direction, and speed. “Based on geo-referenced data, our system calculates exactly when there is a risk of collision”, explains Heinzen. “At that point, AVES initiates a slowdown of the affected turbine, bringing the rotor into what’s known as ‘idle mode’.” According to legal regulations, there is no longer a risk to the bird at 2.5 revolutions per minute.

Over six million training images

“Reliably identifying and tracking the protected species among the hundreds of birds in a wind farm requires a high-performance system”, emphasises the CEO of the start-up. Key to success is the quality assurance in the neural network. “Training the AI-model has been – and continues to be – a major undertaking”, says Heinzen. ProTecBird deploys several fieldwork teams that record birds of all kinds at all seasons and under all weather conditions. At the Husum site, the individual images are then labelled. A team of 44 employees tag the screenshots not only with the name of the species depicted, but also whether it is considered protected. To ensure high data quality, every labelled image is also checked by a second ornithologist. To date, more than six million sets of data have been collected, with many more to follow.

Turn-off rate at under 10 percent

The substantial economic advantage of AVES for wind farm operators is reflected in its low turn-off rates. According to the CEO, these now range between just two and nine percent. “The innovative monitoring and tracking software from our technology partner Rheinmetall gives us a major competitive advantage”, Heinzen points out. Although his company has only been on the market for three years, the start-up already serves customers in several European countries. Wind farm operators worldwide are interested in the anti-collision system “Made in Germany”. Just recently, Heinzen was able to secure a major order in Lithuania: the largest wind farm in the Baltic state, with a capacity of 300 megawatts and strict species protection regulations.

Cybersecurity is essential

To avoid the necessity of obtaining expensive export licences, ProTecBird uses the Rheinmetall technology in a civil version. All components which could be utilized to connect military systems have been removed. Nevertheless, it does not work without defensive measures. Wind farms are considered critical infrastructure. Since the AVES system can be used to shut down the turbines, the system itself must meet increased cybersecurity standards in order to be protected against hacking attempts. Here, too, the technology partner is supporting the start-up with its IT expertise and a new cybersecurity software called COAT.OS, which is already in military use.

Preventing bird strikes on engines

Demand for anti-collision systems such as the one by ProTecBird extends beyond wind energy. The AI-based solution also has great potential at airports. The technology is basically the same, explains Heinzen: “However, that with the AVES Airport variant, we’re not slowing down turbines, but we’re erecting a dynamic acoustic barrier. Using tracking data, we can guide bird flocks away from runways within the designated air corridors.” The ward-off system, designed to prevent bird strikes on aircraft, uses synthetic acoustic signals and is already in operation at the Airbus test airfield in Hamburg-Finkenwerder. A simplified version is also currently being tested at FC Bayern Munich’s Allianz Arena, where bird faeces pose an ongoing and costly problem—just as they do on offshore platforms and in stadiums worldwide.

Profitable cooperation

Whether wind turbine, airport, or stadium – the fact that the individual system components work together smoothly in each of the applications is due to the close cooperation between Rheinmetall and ProTecBird. Their next joint project will be the development of a night module for bats. These nocturnal mammals are strictly protected, but currently there is no solution which enables conditional turbine turn-offs at night. That is about to change.