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B2-1xx

CIGRE 2014

Sharing the transmission grid with storks and other birds

J. Gomes-Mota1, F. Azevedo2, L. Campos Pinto3, N. P. Silva1, J. Casaca3

Albatroz Engineering, 2FCT/UNL-Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 3REN-Rede Elctrica
Nacional, S.A.
Portugal

SUMMARY
Sharing over-head lines [OHL] with birds requires significant efforts and third party
engagement before lines are erected and afterwards as well. The authors show how regular
inspections followed by automatic signal processing and data abstraction followed by
criticality analysis and model validation with grid events records carry the concern about bird
wellbeing across all stages in the life of an OHL.
The stork (in particular, the white stork) is perhaps the most visible of the concerns of REN
Rede Elctrica Nacional, the Portuguese Transmission System Operator [TSO], with the
environment and, in particular, with birds.
This species is one of the disturbing agents of the proper functioning of OHLs, especially near
the estuaries of Tagus, Mondego and Sado rivers, which led to the search for solutions that
minimize interactions between birds and operation of the Portuguese Transmission Grid that
are detrimental to both. The main problems are due to the accumulation of droppings in
insulators, producing a conductive path and the construction of nests, whose materials (whose
size can get close to 1 meter) fall and stay hanging on insulators. Every year, REN invests in
actions to mitigate the effects of the presence of storks on OHL. The main measures include
the installation of anti-landing devices (anemometers) on critical towers and over insulators
strings, and nest transferring for special platforms in more favorable points of the towers. For
these measures to be effective, it is necessary to know where the nests are located
(geographically and locally in each tower). For this, REN commissions an airborne inspection
dedicated to the counting and location of nests. The authors regard the sharing of the electrical
infrastructure with storks as a multi-disciplinary subject and reveal mitigation measures and
other stork-related activities that contribute to improve the knowledge of the storks life cycle
and their acceptance as convivial neighbours on the transmission grid and expect most of the
methods to be adaptable to other voltages, territories and bird species.
KEYWORDS
OHL, bird, storks, stakeholder, engagement, inspection, criticality, reliability, optimisation.

gomes.mota@albatroz-eng.com.

I. INTRODUCTION
Accommodating birdlife with electrical grids is a major endeavour for modern utilities
as they learn to incorporate the requests of external stakeholders into the life cycle of their
assets. Over-Head Lines are a major concern for bird issues as there is the risk of collision,
risk of electrocution and the risk of loss or degradation of habitats. OHL also take damage
from bird interactions in case of collision, electrocution, but also from bird nesting or just
staying on top of OHL equipment [1].
Transmission operators care especially about three types of birds: birds of prey, as
they risk collision onto unseen cables when flying downwards to prey on ground animals,
migratory birds that fly in flock and fail to discriminate conductors on the horizon and birds
that adapted to live next to humans, in a sort of relationship that oscillates from mutualism, to
commensalism and in some cases to parasitism or predation. This latter case is the case for
white storks Ciconia ciconia in the Portuguese Transmission Grid, under the care of REN.
Distribution operators are also affected by birds with a higher emphasis on
electrocution (due to shorter distances between energised and grounded parts) and less on
collisions (OHL are closer to the ground). Medium voltage grids structure spans from one
injector with trunk and branches and are particularly susceptible to faults on poles and
sectionalisers, which are difficult to locate and repair before clients feel the inconvenience of
power loss.
This paper introduces the issues of bird-OHL interactions and follows to the strategies
used to learn about birds, measure and optimise the interactions, with an emphasis on REN
work with storks, which the authors believe could be useful in case of other birds and grids.
II. ACCOMMODATION PRACTICES, ENGAGING WITH STAKEHOLDERS
The best way to mitigate the detrimental effects of the interactions between birds and
OHL is to address each of the three types of phenomena introduced above and study them for
each species or groups of species. In most cases, such interactions are understood only on a
broad level and not locally. Thus, even when there are environmental assessments prior to the
deployment of a new OHL or the uprating of an existing one, it comes as little surprise that
the effects on bird life differ from the assessment. To know what is happening locally and
modify the OHL to improve the coexistence with bird life, active collaboration with local
organisations is essential. Collaboration with universities (including this research), public
advisory or regulatory agencies is also fruitful and bring together people from life sciences,
engineering and social sciences. Also, establishing and maintaining bidirectional channels of
communication with engaged stakeholders and the general public (such as [2]) helps
achieving better results at lower costs, both for birds and TSO [3].
The interactions with birds of prey are the most closely watched due to the comparably
low number of individuals. There are groups of birdwatchers that report each incident where
birds are identified by tag number or name. Some of these birds are monitored throughout
their lives even in case their high mountain territories straddle different countries. An example
of this engagement is the group Casseur dOs with LPO in France following bearded
vultures (Gypaetus barbatus) who reported one incident related to transmission lines on 3rd
August 2009 and another with distribution lines in 27th July 2013 [4].
The interactions with flocks of migrating birds are usually minimised with different
sorts of bird flight diverters [BFD] whose purpose is to dilate the vertical signature of the
cables closely aligned with the horizon, so that birds can perceive them clearly. Red and white
spheres mounted on ground wires to warn aircraft pilots near airfields and highways also help
birds detect conductors.
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Figure 1 Bird flight diverters

Figure 2 nests on distribution tower

However, experience has shown that flocks follow very precise routes in the air like if
there are invisible corridors with turning points much like aircraft pilots do. Unfortunately,
these maps are unknown to humans, and volunteers are called upon to follow OHL and report
bird casualties, and bird flight diverters are installed afterwards in such places. Figure 1 shows
one such installation near Lagoon of bidos, Portugal, where a double circuit 60kV OHL has
BFD installed. Interestingly, spans with and without BFD are interspersed because bird
corridors seem to cross only some spans as there are no bird casualties under the others.
When dealing with birds that adapt to humans, interactions become more complex as
birds take advantage of favourable measures while countering adversarial ones. Such
behaviours challenge engineers creativity: in southern Brazil, a little bird known as Joo de
Barro (mud jack, Furnarius rufus) makes its nest from mud in the rainy season, preferably
in the vicinity to human houses where there are abundant feeding grounds in the open field. It
prefers medium and low voltage towers (Figure 2), placing its nests on the crossbar between
phases. Accidental electrocution has been accounted for as much as 10% of non-supplied
energy in the southern state of Santa Catarina. To reduce these events, the local distribution
operator devised a clamp to put next to the nest when it is less than 0,26m away from the
insulator [5]. Still in Brazil, an ibis named Curicaca Theristicus caudatus acts much like
storks in Portugal: these ibis make their nests on transmission towers and sully insulators with
their droppings. To keep them away, different approaches have been followed [6], ranging
from ultra-sound scarecrows to caps to protect suspension insulator chains.
A similar problem also deserved a multi-technology approach to keep storks and other
large birds away from distribution towers [7]: mechanical vibration devices, loudspeakers
with recording of predator sounds, and moving obstacles were tested on storks and other
birds. One of the key findings of the study is the bird learning capability: after some time,
birds learn that physical or electronic scarecrow-devices are harmless, and they ignore all
but those with stochastic response. Before the introduction of the anti-landing devices in
Portugal, the first measure to keep the storks away from insulators was to place nylon ropes in
areas used for nesting. The rationale was that the birds would avoid that obstacle and, at first,
the number of stork related incidents decreased significantly. But soon the storks learned to
live together with the rope and incorporate it into their own nests.
Storks are reported to affect about 2000-2200km of the Portuguese Transmission Grid
(about 22% to 25% of OHL length), although nesting concentrates on a smaller subset of
towers [8] (Figure 3). Interestingly, field reports and grid incidents suggest storks perch and
roost in towers that are more than 50km away from the nearest tower with nests. The TSO
maintains a significant effort to adapt OHL to storks by means of installing BFD on cables,
anti-perching and anti-nesting devices (anemometers) on towers on hazardous locations and
nesting platforms on safe locations (Figure 4).
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III. LEARNING ABOUT STORKS: INSPECTIONS AND MONITORING

All OHL where stork effects are reported are subject to inspections dedicated solely to
this purpose, as required by maintenance and public authorities. In most cases, inspections
occur once a year, preferably in late spring when eggs in the nests have etched. Inspections
are carried with helicopters with an on-board inspector taking photographs of each tower and
annotating the presence of nests, their location within the tower and their occupancy status
(Figures 3, 4 and 5) when possible. Some trials were performed with unmanned aerial
vehicles [UAV], recording video and time lapse photographs for later processing on the
ground (Figure 6). The expected benefits from UAV include the reduction of hazards related
to human flight near OHL, lower operation costs and fewer disturbances to birds and the
environment due to the much smaller signature of a UAV with less than 100kg of maximum
take-off weight compared with a manned helicopter ten times heavier. Figures 5 and 6 show
the same 400kV tower and illustrate the data acquired with state-of-the art technology for
helicopters and UAV. It is apparent that Figure 5 is more informative for inspection purposes,
and research is still required on UAV and sensor robotics to achieve comparable outputs.
As a complementary activity, the TSO maintains a 24h video monitoring of four stork
nests, taking advantage of the fiber optics communication resources available on the OHL
ground wires [9]. The project has been running since 2010 and nests are subject to video
recording using color video during the day and infra-red during the night. A group of
volunteers keeps a close watch on whats going on and keep an informal record of all events,
which are later wrapped-up and interpreted in a systematical manner.

Figure 3 stork nest concentration near rice

fields and wetlands along Mondego river

Figure 4 anti-nest device, nest on nesting

platform and empty nesting platform

Figure 5 Photograph taken by inspector

inside a helicopter

Figure 6 image acquired automatically

during UAV inspection
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IV. DATA HANDLING, VALIDATION AND ABSTRACTION

The outputs of the airborne inspections are of two types: images and tables of findings,
listed by tower number or location. These findings are extensively matched with asset
management data to validate the presence and condition of nesting platforms and anti-nesting
devices and to estimate the evolution of stork population over the years. Small sections of the
grid are also verified by maintenance personnel when they add or repair stork related devices
and they validate those figures, thus creating a ground truth to which all inspection methods
are compared.
The results obtained by the two airborne inspections, from helicopter and UAV, were
compared on 30 towers of two different OHL. Once the two image sets were analysed by
expert personnel, the difference in findings between the two methods falls below statistical
significance. As mentioned in Section III, reliable operation and multi-function inspections
require more from the UAV outputs and should encourage further research, given its expected
benefits.
Given the extension of OHL to survey, the tediousness and error susceptibility of the
task, the authors were involved in computer vision research to automate the data analysis.
Algorithms begin with the detection of towers in the image sequence (Figure 7) followed by
the detection and localisation of nests within each tower (Figure 8).
In spite of performance dependence on image type and quality, results have shown a
low incidence of false negatives (missing nests), about 5% in the sample, and an acceptable
rate of false positives (inexistent nests reported), about 20% in the sample, which can be
effectively corrected with quality control by inspectors and were robust to variations in sun
light, flight patterns and vegetation. The software was adapted to the data from the UAV trials
and, after modifications to suit different image parameters, results were satisfactory. Future
research will include the detection of different tower shapes, the detection of empty nesting
platforms and anti-nesting devices for the purpose of asset management.
Some limitations are shared by human and software classification: there are cases
where stork nests are piled up in a way that it is difficult to state how many nests are present
and early or decaying nests are difficult to classify in a binary status. The need to detect the
degradation of insulators due to droppings and urination jets has also been reported by grid
operators, in particular in areas where there are no nests.
Once the stork nest data is extracted from the images and translated into numerical
data, it is possible to compute time and space distributions, estimate the evolution of stork
populations and produce statistical information on storks. Such data should contribute to
decisions on where, when and how to accommodate birdlife (Section II) and illustrate how
effective past measures proved to be.

Figure 7 tower detection by software

Figure 8 Valid nest detection by software

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V. STORK CRITICALITY INDEX

Going one step further into abstraction, it is possible to compute stork-related
criticality parameters for every OHL. This was the subject of the research reported in [10].
Moreover, field studies have shown that storks concentrate on relatively small fractions of
OHL, taking advantage of favourable feeding and roosting conditions (Figure 3). In one case
[11], while storks concentrate on only 22% of the inspected OHL, they determine the overall
criticality of the line, as determined by dispatch events (Section VI).
It is necessary to take the detail level of criticality indexes down to the tower-span
scale since the simple comparison of towers in stork areas (about 4000 towers) and the total
number of nests (about 1800 nests according to [8]) is elusive. As Figure 3 shows, one single
tower can concentrate a large fraction of the nests in one (long) circuit. This concentration has
major impacts on criticality as well as on the cost of accommodation (Section II).
The function to express criticality is based on the location of nests within the tower. It
is a semi-quantitative approach based on expert knowledge, attributing weights or costs to
each nest [12]: locations above insulators are most critical while locations on platforms or
below conductors are associated with milder effects. Criticality functions for towers without
nests have yet to be defined. Also, the possible inclusion of anti-nest devices and platforms is
under study as they are tokens to the susceptibility to storks. However, one must take care to
avoid self-reinforcing procedures: if the presence of anti-nest devices increases the criticality
index, one should not add more anti-nest devices (or nesting platforms) just because the
criticality index has risen. Finally, experience suggests that while nests raise significant
hazards to insulators and conductors as birds stay there for long periods, the simple fact that
they perch on hazardous areas can affect the reliability of the grid.
The first use of the criticality index is to rank all OHL relative to theoretical criticality.
This should help set inspection priorities and preventive measures to accommodate storks
impacted on the model. TSO staff with field experience can contribute to the validation or
revision of such models.
VI. BIRD EFFECTS ON OPERATION
The next use of these models is to cross-correlate them with grid events as recorded in
SCADA systems. Each dispatch event is associated to a likely original cause and may be
connected to secondary events that occurred due to the switching and reclosing manoeuvres
caused by the original one. According to [8], storks are second only to lightning as a cause of
grid events. They were linked to 29% of line tripping.
The tripping records are correlated with the criticality indexes computed above. Figure
9 shows an example in central Portugal where an OHL crosses the Mondego and Vouga
basins (the Tagus basin is on the bottom of the image). The criticality index computed on the
territory reaches high values, as shown in Figure 3. So, there is high spatial correlation
between the OHL route and the areas affected by storks. Looking to SCADA records, six
events were record over a five year period in March (twice), August, September, November
and December. This is consistent with the Spring-Autumn migration of storks: fly to Africa in
the winter (January-February) and fly to Northern Europe in the summer (May-July) and
means strong time correlation.
In another example, Figure 10 shows the time correlation between the forest fire
criticality index and the actual grid events triggered by fire (or power cuts ordered by
firefighters). While the examples are straightforward, correlations can be extended to examine
more subtle relation between events attributed to birds and other issues that could contribute
or bring alternative explanations.
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Figure 9 stork criticality spatial

correlation with OHL route

Figure 10 time correlation between criticality index

and actual forest fires

This method still has two limitations: some phenomena, such as birds, need more
observation to create good time models and grid events lack precise location estimates.
. While newer protection systems at substations ought to be able to locate most events
within a +/- 5 span interval, other methods must be found distribute the likelihood of failure
along towers and spans in a reasonable manner for the remainder of the grid. Depending on
the nature of the event, the original cause can be spotted either weeks after the event (wild
fires) or become invisible within hours, as it is the case of dead birds that become prey of
carnivores. In the case of Figure 9, the likelihood of the events was numerically distributed
evenly along the whole OHL, although experience would suggest concentration (Figure 3).
A final cautionary note on correlation being less than causality, as research in [11]
suggests, and that effectively managing bird activities near OHL might require more insight
on early causes that attract birds to given locations, time of year or tower configurations.
VII. CONCLUSIONS AND FURTHER WORK
The authors sought to illustrate how the accommodation to birdlife affects the whole
life cycle of OHL, from the initial project where environment studies and engagement with
stakeholders are widespread to the lesser known efforts during decades of operation. The
careful design of OHL reduces risks for birds across all voltage levels, while transmission
benefits from the effect of asset dimensions being usually much larger than birds. Once the
OHL is in operation, significant efforts are made to minimise impacts and adapt to changes in
the environment (a road passing nearby, a new dam).
Regular inspections provide expert input, and engagement of local stakeholders offers
an external point of view and independent data source to correlate with. It should be
underlined that automation of data processing and integration of multiple functions into a
single inspection is a key factor to offer affordable inspections across many territories and to
voltages as low as 15kV. So, it should be possible to manage joo-de-barro or curicaca in
the same manner as storks. The envisaged introduction of UAV for some inspection functions
could yield bring additional gains on all key factors: safety, cost and environmental signature.
The quantitative knowledge gained from inspections reveals important lessons about
bird behaviour and helps decision-makers to detect long term trends and measure the outcome
of past measures, showing the benefit-to-cost relation of each measure on each territory.
Defining criticality from field data and asset management records is a powerful tool to
sort out maintenance priorities. Combining all elements affecting OHL to a unified status
evaluation for reliability purposes should help estimate the global impact on OHL health
and arbitrate between multiple maintenance actions. There are ample areas of research in this
field as most approaches assume independence of issues and no memory from past status.
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This framework [10], matching criticality indexes to grid events with correlation of
causes and effects, provides predictive tools to optimise maintenance programs and suggests
that inspection dedicated to counting and locating stork nests (now commissioned by REN)
could be improved or integrated with other inspections in the short term.
Grid incidents are rare in Portugal and accidents with birds of prey are also rare. Thus,
each occurrence is intrinsically valuable and one must learn as much as one can and, through
correlation, finding out which were the contributing factors present in the event and the
inhibiters that were missing. This ought to help make informed decisions and pinpoint similar
scenarios while avoiding blanket guidelines that require expensive modifications or exclude
new OHL altogether. These methodologies should adapt to bird species other than storks.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors acknowledge the contributions by Pedro Artiga (Figure 2), LABELEC from EDP
Group (Figure 3, 5, 7 and 8) and CIAFA with the Portuguese Air Force Academy (Figure 6).
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