Snakes descending upon substation in Tennessee keep causing power outages, company says

Something odd is happening in Middle Tennessee, where a series of power outages have been blamed on snakes.

For reasons still unexplained, snakes have been drawn to the equipment at Henpeck substation in Williamson County, where they are dying by electrocution and shorting out the power in the process.

It has happened four times over 10 days, resulting in Middle Tennessee Electric issuing apologies for something that seems like an act of providence.

“There have been different species involved, but mostly gray rat snakes,” Larry Rose of Middle Tennessee Electric told McClatchy News.

“This is a very unusual situation because MTE is a modern, state-of-the-art electric utility with a 99.98% reliability rating; we’re the second largest electric cooperative in the country serving more than 750,000 Tennesseans via 330,000+ accounts, but sometimes Mother Nature has other ideas!”

An investigation has determined the snakes are climbing the steel structure at the substation near Franklin, then edging their way “onto energized equipment or lines,” the company says.

“They sometimes bridge between the energized equipment and they ground the circuit, which causes the breakers to trip, causing an outage,” Rose said.

“This is similar to having a breaker in your home’s breaker box trip. Each time this has happened, we dispatch a crew to the substation where the crew will remove the snake’s carcass and will reset the tripped breaker.”

Gray rat snakes are notorious climbers, not to mention as big as 6 feet in length, according to the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency.

As for why they’d want to climb electrical equipment, it could simply be a search of prey, including birds or the eggs they guard, according to a report published in ZME Science.

Attempts to deter the snakes have so far proved unsuccessful, including “standard wildlife guards” and three types of snake repellents, Rose said. Pest control companies in the area have declined to get involved because they are unlicensed when it comes to wildlife, he added.

“So we’ve contacted specialty wildlife control experts as well as the TWRA for their input,” Rose said.

“We have apologized for the inconvenience this situation is causing our members in the area and we have assured them we are working very hard to find a solution to the snake incursions into our equipment.”

Social media response to the outages has included some sensible theories, including the possibility bug-eating snakes are reacting to “the largest of all periodical cicada broods” emerging across parts of the country.

However, that doesn’t explain why it’s happening at just one substation in Tennessee.

Franklin is about a 20-mile drive south of Nashville.

This story was originally published May 21, 2024 at 2:55 PM with the headline "Snakes descending upon substation in Tennessee keep causing power outages, company says."