Stop the Wildlife Outage Pattern That Repeats Year After Year on the Same Feeders.
TE Connectivity’s WAP polymer covers are engineered for the specific exposed asset geometries that drive wildlife-caused distribution outages — transformer bushings, distribution insulators, breaker bushings, conductor and jumper sections, substation gear. Hot-stick installable on energized assets, UV-stable, available across distribution and substation voltage classes, and now distributed across Canada through Rexel Utility.
Wildlife-Caused Outages Are One of the Most Consistent Forced-Outage Categories on Your Network.
Wildlife outage events follow a pattern. The same handful of feeders on a typical Canadian distribution network absorb the worst-hit count year after year — and the events repeat on the same exposed asset geometries. Squirrels and birds bridging energized phase-to-phase or phase-to-ground at distribution transformers, deadend and line-post insulators, breaker bushings in substations, and conductor or jumper sections at junction points. The pattern is so consistent that reliability planners can identify candidate assets from outage records before a field walkdown happens.
Repeat events on the same worst-hit assets.
The outage data tells the same story year after year — and unprotected assets keep absorbing the events the wildlife population creates around them.
Substation bushing flashover events.
A measurable share of substation forced outages trace back to wildlife flashovers on transformer and breaker bushings — high-consequence events that drive station-level reliability metrics.
CAIDI and SAIDI movement that doesn’t happen.
Reliability metrics get stuck because wildlife events sit at the top of the cause distribution and aren’t being removed by an active mitigation program.
Mitigation stuck at the planning stage.
Wildlife mitigation programs frequently stall at the asset-management roadmap because the engineering, training, and product specification work isn’t coordinated with the supply relationship.
Polymer Covers Engineered for the Specific Geometries That Cause the Outages.
TE Connectivity’s WAP portfolio is engineered around a simple principle: wildlife outages happen on a small set of recognizable exposed asset geometries, and the most effective mitigation is purpose-built polymer covers designed for each one. Insulator covers (deadend, line post, suspension) for the geometries that drive overhead distribution wildlife events. Bushing covers (transformer, breaker, substation) for the apparatus geometries that drive flashover events. Conductor and jumper covers for the points where small animals bridge phases. Substation-class configurations for the higher-consequence gear.
Specifying WAP through Rexel Utility means one Canadian supply relationship for the full distribution and substation cover portfolio, hot-stick installable hardware that deploys without de-energizing the network, and direct access to TE’s application engineering for wildlife mitigation program design, feeder asset selection, and cover specification work.
The Field-Engineering Program That Gets WAP Into Consistent Crew Practice.
Wildlife mitigation programs share a recurring failure mode with most utility hardware programs: the right product specified, the wrong installation practice in the field. TE’s Technical Engagement & Training program is engineered to close that gap for WAP by transferring wildlife mitigation program design and cover installation practice into the engineers and crews who run the work — at the utility’s own operating centres.
North American Engineering. Canadian Distribution.
TE Connectivity is one of the largest engineered electrical-products organizations in North America, with the WAP product line among the most widely specified wildlife-protection portfolios on the continent. Every cover family ships with technical documentation, application notes, and standards compliance to the specs Canadian utilities require — distributed across Canada through Rexel Utility.
Ready to Scope a Wildlife Mitigation Program for Your Worst-Hit Feeders?
Whether you’re scoping a worst-hit-feeder pilot program, specifying WAP covers into a substation wildlife mitigation rollout, or booking a TE training trailer for a crew operating centre, the path is the same: talk to a Rexel Utility specialist. Your regional account manager will coordinate TE’s WAP application engineering as part of the conversation.