How Duke Energy protects animals and prevents outages How Duke Energy protects animals and prevents outages

How Duke Energy protects animals and prevents outages

Critters cause thousands of outages. Video shows the methods Duke Energy uses to keep the lights on

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When the weather is nice and the power goes out, the culprit may not be a fallen tree.

Animals do extensive damage to the electric grid, inducing thousands of outages every year.

As part of Duke Energy’s multi-year effort to modernize the power grid, the company is retrofitting transformers to prevent animal interference and lightning strikes. Squirrels cause the most outages. And snakes, raccoons, birds and other animals knock out the lights when they get into power lines, transformers and substations. Duke Energy is using a variety of devices to keep the power on and critters safe, such as insulator covers, power line spinners, fences and more. This video shows how.

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