Power blackouts caused by Adelaide's skyrocketing bat colony have impacted tens of thousands of homes and businesses in the first three months of this year alone, according to South Australia's electricity network operator.
SA Power Networks has warned of further bat-linked power cuts in the coming weeks as seasonal migration sets in, and young bats foraging for food become tangled in overhead wires.
The colony of grey-headed flying foxes arrived in Adelaide from the eastern states in 2010, taking up residence in Botanic Park and becoming a regular presence in the city's skies.
The initial colony numbered in the hundreds, not the thousands, but SA Power Networks spokesperson Paul Roberts told ABC Radio Adelaide's Stacey Lee and Nikolai Beilharz that "we estimate it may exceed 35,000 bats now".
"That's a really big colony and it's actually been causing increasing numbers of outages over several years," he said.
"This year alone, since the beginning of the year, we've had 27 outages related to bats and they've impacted about 30,000 customers."
He said 89 bat-linked outages cut power to more than 100,000 properties last year — up from 82 outages and 92,000 properties respectively in 2021.
In an incident the previous year, specialist baby units at Adelaide's Women's and Children's Hospital were left without power for almost an hour because of a bat-linked blackout.
"They get moving after the heat of the summer, and particularly what we see is that the young ones, as they go out to forage for food … they look for a place to have a bit of a rest," Mr Roberts said.
"The power lines are obviously an attractive location for that, but unfortunately they can get tangled up in lines and cause power outages.
"Many of the outages occur in the early hours of the morning."
Mitigation strategies include putting insulation covers over lines "where we're getting more bat activity" and installing more switches across the network to limit the impact of outages when they occur, Mr Roberts said.
"You would probably see on poles a big box at the top of the pole with lines coming in one side and lines going out the other — they're the most sophisticated ones and they give us a lot of additional management control," he said.
"We've been working with the government and with some university academics to look at various options [for solutions], and there aren't really a lot."
