Squirrels are often viewed as the most likely suspect of an animal-caused outage.  But in Texas, the problem often doesn’t scamper in — it slithers. CoServ Electric, which operates 29 substations across North Texas, experienced multiple outages in 2019 from bull, corn, and rat snakes crawling into substations. Each outage cost thousands of dollars in repairs and man-hours, and it tested the patience of customers accustomed to receiving reliable power. “Snakes will enter a substation

Western Farmers Electric Cooperative (WFEC), a generation and transmission cooperative with more than 400 substations in Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas and Kansas, had been plagued for decades by repeated substation outages caused by the incursion of bull snakes. Some substations were experiencing multiple outages each week, resulting in $15–20,000 in lost revenue and repair costs with each outage. Billy Young, WFEC substation supervisor, was introduced to TransGard Systems at an industry conference. He learned that

Duke Energy supplies and delivers energy to approximately 4 million customers via 1,400 distribution stations across five states, making it one of the largest electric power companies in the nation. According to Jim Wilson, Reliability and Integrity Planning Specialist with Duke Energy, protecting substations in such a large territory from animal damage was difficult. Raccoons, squirrels and snakes were responsible for repeat damage at “problem” substations, resulting in service disruptions, extra man-hours and expensive repairs.

New York State’s Rochester Gas & Electric (RG&E) operates some 165 substations and provides electricity to 362,000 residents and businesses across six counties in upstate New York. In the early 1980s, RG&E began searching for ways to address a growing problem of outages caused by squirrels and raccoons entering substations and damaging or destroying equipment. Animal damage caused 20% of all substation outages — second only to weather as a cause of damage. “We tried

Mishawaka Utilities electric distribution system is the second largest municipal utility in the state of Indiana, providing service to a population of 46,557. The utility operates 11 substations located at strategic points throughout the city of Mishawaka and maintains the distribution system, which consists of nearly 127 miles of overhead and 176 miles of underground distribution lines. In 2001, Mishawaka began to explore the application of an animal deterrent system for one of its substations

Ameren is the largest electric utility in Missouri and the second largest electric utility in Illinois, servicing approximately 2.4 million customers across both states. The company maintains 2,400 substations, 1,400 of which are in Illinois. According to Steve Wolter, a consulting engineer at Ameren, at least 50% of the company’s Illinois substations were at high risk for damage from squirrels, raccoons, opossums and even snakes. Ameren explored multiple solutions for the problem of repeated substation