Wind Farm Visit

Today we stayed in Osório and visited a wind farm called Ventos do Sul. It is part of a larger organization called Elecnor. Ventos do Sul has 148 turbines on their farm.  

Today was another hard hat wearing day!

The land that they built their wind turbines on is rented out to local farmers who grow crops or let their cattle and horses graze there. 

The facility also has a lot of birds that live on the land. There is one species of bird in particular (sorry i dont recall the name nor can I spell it) that is a good ecological indicator that lives on the property and this is good news for the company because it means that the birds feel safe there even though there are spinning turbine blades. 

 

 

Ventos do Sul is conducting a 10 year environmental study on the impact that the wind farm is having on the bird populations. One of the negatives to wind power is that it causes mortality in bird and bat species.  This particular wind farm states that they have found that less than 0.5 birds per turbine are killed a year (so that is less than 74 birds a year). Our guide explained that their bird collision rates are very low because the birds native to the area naturally fly at levels well below the height of the turbine blades. He also said that another reason contributing to their low bird collision rates are that the turbine blades have a slower revolution speed than the ones that we would see in the United States for example.  

This company sounds like they are very concerned about the environment and the impact that their wind farms have on it. It was really interesting to me to hear about their environmental and sustainable practices. We saw a few of their buildings and they all were very pretty. To me it looked like they were built with a passive design scheme to allow the building to require less energy for heating/cooling. Brazil doesn't actually have much in terms of heating technology in buildings because it doesn't get super cold here. Even though we are visiting Brazil during their winter, the temperature has been about 75 degrees so far. 

Here is a little taste of home that we found at dinner today:

And here are some more puppies: