Name
Carlos Jorquera
Job title
CTO
Organisation
Boulder Imaging
Speaker biography
Carlos founded Boulder Imaging 30 years ago with the goal of merging high-performance imaging technologies with artificial intelligence to be able to mimic human perception and solve complex engineering problems in industry and scientific research. Applications for this technology include high-speed inspection for high-volume products, such as currency and architectural materials, and most recently, the IdentiFlight system for protecting sensitive bird species in windfarms. Carlos was born in Chile, studied physics and electrical engineering at MIT, and began his career designing remote-sensing instruments for multiple spacecrafts at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
Speaking At
Presentation title
Efficacy analysis of the IdentiFlight avian anti-collision system using fatality monitoring data across 15 windfarms in 3 continents
Presentation summary
The efficacy of technologies designed to minimize collisions between wind turbines and protected bird species is notoriously difficult to assess. Multiple years of operation alongside untreated control turbines are ideally needed to collect enough data for meaningful conclusions; however, to date only relatively small sample sizes have been available for analysis. Sufficient data to allow for meaningful efficacy analysis has become available for IdentiFlight, a machine-vision based technology used to selectively shut-down on-demand (SDOD) individual turbines when a protected bird species approaches the turbine. In this presentation we investigate the efficacy of IdentiFlight as well as assess potential predictive factors for fatality risk on a turbine-by-turbine basis. This is done using fatality data collected from IdentiFlight installations that have been operational for between six months and eight years, at 15 wind farms on 3 continents. The total dataset covers 626 turbines and 1650 turbine-years of operation.
