Wildlife induced outages caused by electrocution and collisions are preventable! Associated fire ignitions can also be managed.

Raptor protection in Spain was boosted by royal degree in 1432/2008 which introduced legislation to direct Power Utilities to protect wildlife from powerline electrocution and collisions.

It resulted in an improved collaboration between Utilities, NgO's, the Spanish public and government departments with a united goal to protect wildlife and reduce outages & fires related to wildlife interaction.

Since 2008, Spanish utilities invested ~€120 million euro in wildlife mitigation measures & have dramatically reduced the electrocution mortality in raptor populations in the areas that have been insulated.

While this is extremely positive in the context electrocution and electrocution related fire ignition risk, Spain still has a lot of unprotected structures and some challenges remain.....
a) Current collision prevention methods have limitations as illustrated in the attached photos...
b) Not all structures in Spain have implemented insulation yet.

Photo 1: Illustrates an bird safe structure using extended bird safe insulators (>900mm), insulation of live components and best practice of dropping the conductors underneath the tower cross arm.

Photo 2: Illustrates another insulated tower in foggy conditions. In this case the spiral bird flight diverters are visible but difficult to see.

Photo 3: This photo demonstrates the poor visibility of the conductors and the spiral bird flight diverters behind the first structure travelling into the distance in the fog.

Photo 4: Not all structures are insulated, within the flight ranges of the conservation areas. All of the above photos were taken within 1km of each other.

Please reply and feed your thoughts and comments underneath....