Hubbell’s Greenjacket Service Helps Mitigate Wildlife-Caused Outages at Member Cooperative

When power outages occur, inclement weather or heavy usage during extreme temperatures are usually the first thought that comes to mind. And while weather-related factors tend to be common sources of power outages and disruptions, there’s another source found in nature that can be just as impactful: wildlife.

According to findings from EPRI, a non-profit energy research and development organization, up to 20% of all power outages can be attributed to wildlife contact with energized equipment. Given the frequency of these incidents and the impact they have on your utility’s operations, a comprehensive, precise-fit solution that addresses risk points to the equipment and structures of each substation can dramatically reduce or eliminate these outages.

RESCO MEMBER TURNS TO GREENJACKET FOR PESKY SQUIRREL PROBLEM

Wright-Hennepin Cooperative Electric Association, which serves more than 59,000 accounts in rural Wright County and western Hennepin County, experienced recurrent outages from squirrel activity at its Bass Lake substation. Despite vegetation management and repeated attempts to mitigate access to the substation itself, the incidents continued to occur.

A different approach was necessary to solve the substation’s squirrel problem, and the cooperative turned to Greenjacket to implement an asset protection and outage protection solution.

The project entailed full coverage of Hubbell’s Greenjacket substation solution. With a goal to eliminate all potential phase-to-phase and phase-to-ground contact points within the substation, the transformer, GOAB switch, regulators, reclosers, bus, conductors, pot heads and arrestors all received a customer-tailored cover-up to blanket all exposed contact points.

The installation of the cover-up took one full day. During the process, a full team from Hubbell was on-site for training and guidance purposes, as well as to ensure proper fit and troubleshoot any questions.

GREENJACKET OFFERS PROTECTION FOR HIGH-RISK SUBSTATIONS

Formed by an electric utility expert with years of field experience—who had seen first-hand the damage and disruption caused by animal and bird contact with equipment—Greenjacket is a precise-fit turnkey solution that offers the best product for high-risk substations where the substation is either a critical use station or has a history of persistent contacts regardless of attempts to use alternate wildlife guards and covers. A critical use station would be defined as a substation that feeds an airport, a manufacturing plant, a hospital, a nuclear station, a data center, a dense population area or another critical customer.

Greenjacket is a precise-fit, custom made-to-order product that has an exacting fit to within 1/8th of an inch accuracy to the underlying equipment. The exacting fit is achieved through a team of linemen who image customer substation equipment; designers who plot the equipment and design the cover; a patented made-to-order manufacturing process and shipping in a turnkey boxed solution complete with a Site Protection Plan for installation.

To learn more about Greenjacket and its services, click here.