Kincardine Offshore Wind has fulfilled the bird strike monitoring requirement set under Condition 22ai for its floating offshore wind farm. The Marine Directorate Licensing Operations Team confirmed that the condition had been met following feedback from NatureScot. The project used DTBird technology to carry out post-construction monitoring.
The Kincardine wind farm is located 15 kilometres off the coast of Aberdeen in the North Sea. It consists of five Vestas V164 turbines of 9.5 MW, installed in 2021, and one earlier Vestas V80 turbine of 2 MW, installed in 2018. All turbines were equipped with the DTBird V8N2 system, which uses daylight and thermal cameras to record bird activity and potential collisions.
Condition 22ai requires offshore wind farm developers to monitor collision risks and provide empirical data to confirm or refine environmental impact assessments. The approval demonstrates that the monitoring objectives have been met and that reliable data has been collected under the challenging conditions of floating offshore wind. It also indicates that the monitoring results may contribute to wider research on bird interactions with offshore wind turbines.
