In early February, the city of Yellowknife and surrounding communities were plunged into darkness for four hours due to an outage at the Jackfish Lake substation. When power was restored, the Northwest Territories Power Corporation (NTPC) posted to social media saying the culprit was likely “wildlife interference in the substation.”
The true cause of the outage was later found to be a cable failure that created a ground fault, which impacted the entire diesel backup system, says Doug Prendergast, the manager of communications at NTPC. When asked why wildlife was initially assumed to be at fault, Prendergast explained this wouldn’t be the first time a critter was behind an outage.
“The approximate location of the failure has seen several faults previously that were caused by wildlife contact—namely ravens in our substation,” he says. “When the outage on February 5 occurred, operators initially expected that this was the most likely cause again.”
Ravens causing outages is so common that even Yellowknife residents got in on the accusations, posting comedic comments under the NTPC’s social post. “Will there finally be bounties on the ravens so this doesn’t happen again?” said one commenter, with a laughing emoji. “Goddamn flamin’ raven’,” said another.
The latter comment is a reference to an infamous event from 2014 that took place outside Yellowknife, near the Bluefish hydro dam. In a frankly disastrous turn of events, a NTPC spokesperson told CBC at the time that a raven was electrocuted in the substation, caught fire, and started a nearly two-hour power outage. The fire then grew and burned around 15 hectares of land. Water bombers and more than a dozen firefighters were brought in to put out the fire, according to the CBC.
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So, what’s the deal with ravens and electrical substations? Ryan Norris, a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Guelph, theorizes it could be due to heat. “Perhaps it might be warmer in the substation, and that would be more attractive to them,” he says. “If there’s any species that might be attracted to the warmth for nesting, it would be a raven, because they nest fairly early in the year when it’s still quite cold out.”
As for how, exactly, the power outages are caused, Ontario energy company Elexicon Energy explains that when large birds nest in substations, it’s common for them to contact the energized equipment, which can cause electrocution and a potential power outage.
But the ravens aren’t alone. Other species known to cause outages include raccoons and squirrels, who climb poles and make contact with transformers, and even animals such as moles and groundhogs can cause outages by chewing on underground electrical infrastructure while tunnelling.
To minimize the number of wildlife-caused outages at Jackfish Lake substation, Prendergast says the station utilizes GreenJackets, which are insulative covers that protect both the equipment and wildlife. The station also has speakers which play a constant loop of raven distress sounds to alert the birds that the substation is not a safe harbour.
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