EchoSense, the bat smart curtailment technology developed by Natural Power, officially launched as an independent commercial business (LLC) on January 1, 2025.
Kevin Denman, Managing Director, and commercial lead on this project, said: “The formation of EchoSense, LLC is an exciting next step in the growth of EchoSense. Increased market demand for advanced curtailment solutions such as EchoSense, and the unique challenges associated with implementing them, require a team and business built specifically for that purpose. Recognizing this need, Natural Power created EchoSense, LLC to enable the next phase of our growth and to better serve our clients.
“Multiple studies now exist that show the efficacy of EchoSense as a more cost-effective alternative to a blanket curtailment strategy for minimization of bat fatalities. These, along with multiple years of full commercial operation on projects permitted by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, demonstrate that it is possible to protect bat populations while also reducing the sometimes substantial energy losses previously associated with the standard approach.”
How does it work?
EchoSense maintains a reduction in bat fatalities comparable to a blanket curtailment strategy while giving back approximately 40-60% of energy production that would otherwise be lost under blanket curtailment methods.
The EchoSense system can be grouped into two subsystems:
Detection subsystem - collects bat acoustic and environmental data
Decision subsystem – processes data against a predetermined rule set and issues commands to curtail or release turbines
System overview
Meteorological data is collected on every turbine and processed against highly configurable bat protection rules for each turbine
Curtailment commands are issued to individual turbines
Presence of bats can be aggregated site-wide or by predefined zones (based on data driven approach) allowing optimization for bat activity and habitat use of individual sites
Nacelles that are instrumented for acoustic data collection are fitted with microphones mounted on brackets on the top of the nacelle, and a bat detector within the nacelle
The bat detector sends data through the project network to the EchoSense server located onsite which processes the data and executes farm-level control
The system is engineered to ensure durability of components, NERC CIP compliant network security, and minimal, simple and safe periodic maintenance
Is EchoSense right for my site?
Bat activity avoidance and associated energy losses can be calculated for different strategies using onsite acoustic and meteorological data
This analysis can then be used to calculate conservation benefits and return on investment of multiple curtailment scenarios
EchoSense can assist with collection of onsite acoustic data if it is not available
