It's a quiet evening. No storm. No wind. And suddenly… no power.
In many cases, the likely explanation for this seemingly random interruption is wildlife.
Across Little River Electric Cooperative’s service area, animals such as squirrels, birds and snakes come in contact with electric equipment, creating a fault in the circuit and a sudden interruption to your service (and often their existence). Depending on the location on the system and the equipment involved, these critters can cause thousands of members to lose power, sometimes for hours.
When an animal simultaneously touches parts of electrical equipment that aren’t supposed to connect, such as a power line and a metal transformer case, it creates an unintended circuit, or fault. When that happens, protective devices like breakers and reclosers are activated. These devices either blink or shut off the flow of power.
When you experience a blink, or very brief service interruption, that means the animal is likely out of the way and power is flowing normally again. However, a longer outage means the animal remained in the path of electricity, so a localized shutdown is triggered to prevent further damage or fire.
Squirrels are some of the most common culprits, as they like to travel along power lines and poles. Birds create issues by nesting in our equipment or perching together on overhead lines. And where there are birds, there are often snakes slithering around our substations. Meanwhile, raccoons climb, rodents chew and larger animals can damage equipment by wandering too close.
Little River Electric installs protective covers, guards and barriers to keep animals away from sensitive equipment. In some cases, deterrents are used to make areas less attractive to wildlife. These measures limit how often animalcaused outages occur, but they can’t stop all of them. Little River Electric members can play a small but important role in this prevention effort by keeping bird feeders and animal feed away from power lines and equipment.
