The Fight Against Animal-Caused Substation Outages
Every day across the country, animals enter substations for warmth, food, security, or simply out of curiosity. In many areas, wildlife intruding into power equipment has become the leading cause of outages – even more common than storms or vegetation.
A single substation outage can cost tens of thousands of dollars in equipment repair or replacement, man-hours and more. The annual cost to utility companies of recovering from animal-related outages is estimated in the billions of dollars, excluding the costs of lost commercial activity, reduced productivity, and consumer dissatisfaction.
So, what’s the solution for deterring an animal’s natural instinct to enter a substation?
PATENTED FENCE KEEPS CLIMBING ANIMALS OUT
In 2015, Former National Security Agency Deputy Director John C. Inglis said that squirrels were the number-one threat to the U.S. electrical grid, even more than terrorism or cyberattacks. With increasing annual power needs and shrinking animal habitats, that threat clearly hasn’t diminished.
For years, engineers and technicians have attempted to prevent or deter incursions by squirrels, raccoons, snakes, and other animals using an array of methods: from bushings and line guards to decoy predators, insulator coatings, and more. These measures have had some temporary success, but they haven’t provided permanent solutions: as an APPA representative noted in The Washington Post, “Animals aren’t just smart, they’re persistent.”
Some companies have found a way to use an animal’s own behaviour and experience to teach them that a substation is not a hospitable place to visit.
WHY FENCES WORK
Patented fencing system delivers a humane electric shock to climbing animals, keeping them from entering substations and discouraging them from returning.
The technology behind this type of electric fencing uses an animal’s own behaviour against it. Squirrels, for example, have habitats that can span acres. Squirrels and raccoons also have very accurate “spatial memory”, that is, a knack for remembering key locations and landmarks in their environment.
Just as these animals remember key areas in their environment, they also remember the location of a negative or dangerous experience, such as an uncomfortable jolt at a substation. That memory reinforces the instinct to avoid the unpleasant sensation the fence can cause.
