Campus squirrels have raised eyebrows in the facilities planning department.
Spontaneous loss of power has been a consistent problem for the past handful of months throughout campus. While the causes of these planned and unplanned outages vary, the squirrels are chief among them.
“The most common cause for the power outages experienced on campus is directly related to the squirrel population,” Ashton Pearson, facilities management director, said. “More often than not, squirrels will make multiple phase contact on overhead lines, which creates a short circuit. When this occurs, it causes fuses to blow.”
Illustration by: Jake Thrasher
Pearson said other common reasons for loss of power include routine equipment failures, such as fuses blowing because of transient voltage.
“This is what occurred (on March 6) when a line fuse blew in the residence hall area of campus,” Pearson said. “The line fuse that blew caused a voltage spike at the switchgear in the Grove, resulting in additional fuses blowing.”
While facilities management is constantly working to prevent these sorts of system failures, many of these incidents are merely unavoidable in order to ensure the overall safety of students and longevity of electrical equipment, according to Pearson.
Additionally, facilities management requires planned outages in order to complete various construction projects across campus, some of which may also occur throughout the rest of the spring semester.
“It should be understood that fuses act as a first line of defense to protect the campus circuits and electrical equipment,” Pearson said. “It would be impractical to say that there will not be any power outages — scheduled or unscheduled — over the remainder of the semester. While we work to minimize outages and the disruptions power outages cause, it is impossible to eliminate all variables.”
Given the frequency of these losses of power, however, many students still feel the University is not taking the necessary steps to ensure a productive learning environment on campus.
“I definitely do not think the University does enough about the constant power issues,” freshman English major Mallory Dungan said. “When you live in a dorm that houses over 500 girls, it is very scary and dangerous when there is no power. It makes it nearly impossible to get anything done. With almost all of my homework or studying being done online these days, it makes it very hard when you have no power to be able to complete anything.”
Pearson said this concern may not be something students have to deal with for much longer.
“Facilities management is very sensitive to the reliability of service to the campus and is very aware of the inconvenience this creates for the campus community,” Pearson said. “A new project, referred to as the Grove Switch Project, is slated to begin in the very near future. This project will replace switchgear in the Grove that has reached its functional obsolescence. Most of the new switchgear will be placed underground.”
Pearson said as more electrical distribution equipment is placed underground, reliability of the electrical distribution system will improve, reducing outages due to weather and animal-related incidents.
In the meantime, however, students are still concerned with the effects of these frequent outages on their day-to-day lives.
“If it is already dark outside, then it makes it difficult to do normal things in my dorm,” freshman Avery Nader said. “Most of the time the only light source I can use is my cellphone and that won’t work once the battery dies. I don’t necessarily believe what the school is doing is helpful. The outages happen too often for most students’ likings.”
