Solutions
Bird Protect™ Agro
AI-powered agricultural activity detection and automated wind turbine shutdown
Bird Protect™ Agro extends IRIDA's proven Bird Protect™ technology beyond wildlife detection to address a specific operational and environmental challenge at wind farms: turbine shutdown requirements during agricultural activities. Agricultural operations such as ploughing, harvesting and mowing can attract birds by exposing insects, small mammals and other food sources. At wind farms where environmental permits require turbines to stop during these activities, Bird Protect™ Agro provides an automated system for detecting agricultural machinery, determining whether activity is taking place within a defined protection zone, initiating the appropriate response and creating a complete compliance record.
Detect the activity. Apply the rules. Protect wildlife. Document compliance.
Detect
Industrial optical and thermal cameras continuously monitor the areas surrounding the wind turbines.
Dedicated AI detection models identify relevant agricultural machinery operating within the monitored area. Activity-classification models can then determine the nature of the agricultural operation and provide the information required for the system to decide whether shutdown conditions apply.
How it works
Bird Protect™ Agro uses IRIDA's existing camera, Edge AI, geofencing, communications and wind-turbine integration infrastructure, combined with dedicated AI models developed to recognise agricultural vehicles and activities in real time.
When agricultural machinery is detected, the system verifies its position and activity and applies configurable geofencing, permit-specific rules and risk logic to determine whether action is required.
Where the defined conditions are met, the system can automatically initiate a turbine shutdown or generate an alert for operator intervention. All detections, decisions, actions and associated evidence are time-stamped and securely recorded, creating a verifiable trail for environmental compliance and auditing.
Designed for
- Wind farms with agricultural land within or around the project area
- Projects requiring turbine shutdown during ploughing, harvesting, mowing or other agricultural operations
- Sites with permit-defined agricultural shutdown zones
- Operators seeking to reduce manual monitoring and intervention
- Projects requiring documented evidence of environmental compliance
- Wind farms seeking to minimise unnecessary turbine downtime through targeted, rule-based shutdowns
Decide
Detection alone does not necessarily require a turbine to stop.
Bird Protect™ Agro combines the detected activity with configurable geofencing and permit-specific shutdown logic. The system evaluates where the machinery is operating, the type of activity detected and the rules applicable to the individual project before determining the appropriate response.
This enables shutdown strategies to reflect the actual environmental permit instead of applying a simple site-wide response to every agricultural vehicle detected.
Act
When a relevant agricultural event enters a permit-defined shutdown condition, Bird Protect™ Agro can communicate directly with the wind farm infrastructure through IRIDA's existing SCADA and turbine interfaces.
Depending on the project configuration, the system can initiate the required turbine shutdown automatically or notify the operator for intervention.
For the initial deployment concept, IRIDA proposes a semi-automated, safety-first approach: immediate automatic shutdown when a relevant vehicle enters the defined zone, followed by transmission of images and event data to the operations team for human verification. Restart takes place after confirmation or once the permit-defined conditions have expired.
Document
Every stage of the process can be recorded: Detection → AI verification → Permit/risk assessment → Turbine action → Operator notification → Event reporting.
Events are time-stamped and securely stored, together with the associated images, decisions and system actions. This creates a verifiable and auditable compliance trail, supporting reporting to operators, environmental consultants and regulatory authorities.
Built on the Bird Protect™ platform
A major advantage of Bird Protect™ Agro is that it does not require an entirely new monitoring ecosystem. The solution builds on the existing Bird Protect™ architecture, including:
- Industrial optical and thermal cameras
- AI detection and tracking
- Configurable geofencing
- Native SCADA and turbine interfaces
- Automated notifications
- Cloud-based event management
- Cybersecurity and access control
- Audit trails and compliance reporting
- IRIDA remote monitoring and operations infrastructure
The additional agricultural functionality is introduced through dedicated vehicle-detection and activity-classification AI models, permit-specific shutdown rules, agricultural event workflows and reporting tools — making Bird Protect™ Agro particularly suitable for wind farms already using Bird Protect™, where the same infrastructure can potentially support both wildlife protection and agricultural-management compliance.
Key benefits
Bird Protect™ Agro transforms an operationally demanding environmental requirement into a structured, automated and auditable workflow. It can help reduce manual monitoring, decrease operator workload and minimise unnecessary turbine downtime by restricting intervention to situations where the defined permit conditions are actually met. At the same time, every relevant event and action is documented, creating a clear compliance record for operators and authorities.
Shutdown on Demand (SDoD)
Bird Protect™ Agro applies IRIDA's Shutdown on Demand technology — automated turbine shutdown or operator alerts based on detected agricultural activity and permit rules.
Turn compliance into insight
Let's map the monitoring concept for your next project phase.
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