Did you know that every year, squirrels and other critters are the cause of thousands of outages across the United States? Although squirrels may be cute, these little creatures can cause some big problems for our customers and our electrical service infrastructure.
You often see squirrels scampering around, climbing up trees, and even our utility power poles. Most people don’t think much about it. They just see a little squirrel doing what squirrels do. Sometimes, these squirrels find themselves making multiple points of contact with our electrical equipment or chewing things they shouldn’t. Unfortunately, in many cases, the wildlife involved in creating these outages doesn’t survive. These major miscalculations on their end can cause our customers to lose power until one of our crews can safely get repairs completed.
In 2023, the American Public Power Association ranked squirrels at number 3 on their top 10 list of causes of outages reported by public power utilities, just behind trees and equipment failure (click/tap here to see the full article). Thousands of squirrel-caused outages happen every year all over the country. Tree trimming next to electrical infrastructure also helps to decrease these outages. The next time you see an outage on an otherwise sunny day, the problem could be caused by a squirrel.