Friday, June 27, 2008

Chemical Fog Keeps Birds Out of Substations

PG&E is using methyl-anthranilate fog to keep nuisance birds away from high-voltage substations. The accumulation of bird excrement on substation equipment presents serious risks to system reliability and under the right conditions can cause a system outage. Cleaning capacitor banks requires their removal from service, which reduces transmission capacity, is time consuming, costly and is a health risk. Utilities have used bird bombs and propane cannons to control nuisance birds.

PG&E uses bird repellent Reje X-it Fog Force Bird Repellent, a food-grade, nonlethal aerosol fog formulation of methyl anthranilate that is approved by the Environmental Protection Agency and is registered for use by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation. The cost for each capacitor bank is approximately $10,000. (Transmission & Distribution World, Oct 2007)

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