Abstract
‘NoordzeeWind’ (a joint venture of Nuon Duurzame Energie and Shell Wind Energy) has built a wind farm consisting of 36 wind turbines off the coast of the Netherlands, near Egmond aan Zee. The turbines were built in the summer of 2006 and the site is in operation since January 2007. The main goal of this wind farm is to evaluate the economical, technical, ecological and social effects of offshore wind farms in general. Therefore a Monitoring and Evaluation Program (NSW-MEP) has been developed to gather the knowledge resulting from this project. This knowledge will be made available to all parties involved in the realisation of large-scale offshore wind farms. Bureau Waardenburg and IMARES in cooperation have been commissioned to execute both the baseline and the effect study on the effects the wind farm has on flight paths, flight altitudes and flux of local and migrating marine birds as well as non-marine migrating birds.
The baseline study, describing the reference situation before construction of the wind farm, has been carried out in 2003-2005 (Dirksen et al. 2005; Krijgsveld et al. 2005). The study design of the effect study is presented in the strategy of approach (Krijgsveld et al. 2006), including the general set up of the study and the techniques that are employed. In March 2008 preliminary results obtained in 2007 were reported (Krijgsveld et al. 2008).
The report at hand is a status report presenting preliminary results on flying birds, collected from the start of the program in the spring of 2007 until the end of 2008. Data are based on both radar and visual observations, carried out in the wind farm area. In the final report, planned in 2010, results of the entire monitoring program will be analysed and presented in further detail.
The Offshore Wind farm Egmond aan Zee has a subsidy of the Ministry of Economic
Affairs under the CO2 Reduction Scheme of the Netherlands