Project developer NOTUS energy and Dresden-based specialist Light:Guard have signed a multi-year framework agreement covering aircraft detection lighting systems for NOTUS’s new wind farms in Germany. The deal, signed this week, covers 21 projects with a total of 83 wind turbines.
Under the agreement, Light:Guard will equip the majority of the NOTUS new-build portfolio with its demand-controlled night marking (BNK) system. With BNK, the red aviation warning lights on wind turbines stay switched off by default: the system monitors the airspace around a wind farm and activates the lighting only when an aircraft approaches. Germany’s Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) has made BNK mandatory for wind turbines since last year.
“We want our projects to show consideration for people and nature. Equipping our wind farms with BNK is accordingly important to us, and in Light:Guard we have found a reliable partner for it,” said NOTUS energy managing director Hannes Otto. Eileen Hänel, sales manager at Light:Guard, said the companies intend to continue the cooperation “to make the night sky darker together”.
The two companies have already cooperated on BNK for several years, with a number of existing NOTUS turbines retrofitted with the light:guard system in that time. Light:Guard has worked in the BNK field since 2008, cooperates with turbine manufacturers including GE, Nordex and Vestas, and says it has switched off the permanent lighting on more than 3,500 turbines in Germany. Its system uses both multilateration and signal-strength evaluation. Potsdam-based NOTUS energy develops, builds and operates wind and solar farms as well as battery storage worldwide.
