Eyes in the sky: windfarm plans to install better eagle protection

The proposal is for 30 eagle collision mitigation technology towers, called Identiflight towers, spread throughout Musselroe Windfarm's 5500 hectares.

"This achieves a full and complete coverage of all wind turbines and takes into account relevant site environmental factors, as well as Woolnorth's understanding of eagle utilisation and behaviours at the site," the application said.

The project, which includes towers with eight wide field of view cameras and a movable high resolution stereoscopic cameras, is estimated to cost $8 million.

The system consists of monopole towers and couples the cameras with artificial intelligence networks that rapidly analyses the images.

It tracks the movement of objects in the sky around the windfarm and determines whether they are birds, and whether it is an eagle, the development application said.

It said if an eagle was identified it would record its position and trajectory in real time relative to the turbines.

If it's determined an eagle is in the path of a wind turbine, there's a mechanism to slow down one or more turbines to reduce the risk of eagle collision, the application said.

The towers are expected to range from six to 10 metres high.

The same technology is installed at Cattle Hill Wind Farm in the central highlands. Those towers were installed in 2018/19.

A representative of the Environmental Protection Authority said the proposal didn't need to be assessed by the board as it fell within the scope of a previous approval.

The development application is before Dorset Council and is open to community feedback.