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Earth's Lands Drying Out: Nations Address Crisis

This week, global leaders are gathering for critical talks aimed at addressing one of the most pressing environmental crises of our time: the increasing dryness of Earth’s lands. Climate change, overexploitation of water resources, and unsustainable agricultural practices have been contributing to the alarming trend of land degradation and desertification across many parts of the world. These issues, if left unchecked, pose grave risks to food security, biodiversity, and human livelihoods, making it essential for...

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Electrical Substations

Protecting Substations Against Animal Invaders

A closer look at animal-caused outages at substations

BY BILL REICHARD, TransGard Systems

Every year, squirrels, raccoons, snakes, and other climbing animals cause substation outages across North America. According to a 2010 University of Minnesota study, the resulting estimated cost to electric utilities is between $15 million and $18 million per year. However, when commercial entities and consumer frustration are taken into consideration, the overall cost of these outages to electric utilities can cost the U.S. economy between $80 billion and $188 billion per year.

Utilities are recognizing that while the costs to perform actual substation repairs are significant, the cost to repair a reputation is much higher—and they are taking steps to install measures to keep climbing animals at bay.

WHY SUBSTATIONS ATTRACT ANIMALS Substations are a source of heat, shelter, protection, and food for a variety of animal species, which explains why the aforementioned animals are so...

Electrical Substations Articles


Substation Automation

The Digital Substation Utopia

Electric utilities have long considered digital substations an insubstantial concept: an ideal vision of all-knowing substations networked into an intelligent grid. However, technological innovations have slowly emerged in the past few decades, consequently, transforming this utopian vision into a...