With reflector flags, birds are more likely to avoid collisions with overhead lines. As collisions decrease, there are also fewer power outages.
This year, Vaasa’s electricity grid company will hang 550 reflective flags on power lines to prevent birds from crashing into them.
Reflective tickets are placed in the distribution area based on where collisions occur the most. In total, tickets are placed for a distance of about seven kilometers.
Vaasan Sähköverkko is currently installing reflector flags, and its purpose is to hang all flags on power lines during April.
Reflector flags blowing with the wind are more clearly visible to birds than the previously used bird balls. With the help of reflective flags, bird collisions with power lines can be reduced by as much as 60 percent.
The number of bird collisions with power lines varies from year to year. A year ago, Vaasa’s electricity network estimated that several dozen collisions causing power outages occur in its area a year.
The number of collisions is influenced by, among other things, the migration routes of birds, the number of birds, the flood situation and food frozen in the fields. According to Birdlife Finland’s estimate, more than 100,000 birds die in Finland every year when flying towards power lines.
Vaasa Sähköverkko switched from using bird balls to reflective flags about eight years ago. Last spring, it installed more than 600 reflective flags on its power lines.
*Vaasa Sähköverkto’s operating engineer Magnus Nylund and bird enthusiast Ari Lähteenpää talked about the benefits of reflector flags in the morning of Yle in May 2022.*