Yes, it really happens — squirrels can knock out your power.
Just like your home has a fuse box, our electrical system uses fuses too. When a squirrel runs along our overhead lines, its big bushy tail can be brushed against energized cable, and his legs are on his top of the transformer. That contact can trip the fuse, cutting power to your home.
A lineman then must head out — using a hot stick or a bucket truck — to reset the fuse and restore service.
It’s not just squirrels.
Birds can also cause similar outages. However, we see more squirrel-related incidents than any other wildlife.
Can we prevent it?
In some high-risk areas, we install wildlife guards over equipment to prevent this kind of contact. These guards on the bushing on all our poled mounted transformers.
However, the guards cannot protect against all the wildlife activities. The guards reduce the number of wildlife outages, but they are not full proof.
Unfortunately, wildlife rarely survives these incidents. Whether it’s contact with energized equipment or chewing on wires, the result is usually fatal.
We work hard to reduce outages by trimming trees and maintaining our equipment, but wildlife remains a leading cause of service interruptions. That said, Merrimac Light is proud to have one of the highest reliability records in the region — and we were recently recognized with a national award for our rapid response and restoration of service.
Wildlife guard.