The box, which has been named GridScout, contains several components. Among them is a root monitor and a "woodpecker detector and deterrent". In addition, there is a communication unit that sends data along the chain of boxes and into a central unit. The whole thing is powered by batteries that are charged by solar panels.
The company and inventor Stig Skjelvik recently received a patent for the woodpecker deterrent.
A patent protects specific solutions to a technical problem. You can get a patent for inventions that have a technical character and technical effect, and that can be recreated. The invention must differ significantly from what is known.
Started ten years ago
Skjelvik got the idea for the solution, and what would become the company GridGuard, while he was working at Smartgrid, an industry cluster for smart solutions in the electricity grid.
At a power grid test field in Nord-Trøndelag, he saw for himself how much damage woodpeckers can cause in just a few years.
“ The wooden posts looked like Swiss cheese, so I thought we should be able to solve this with technology,” says Skjelvik.
Ten years after Skjelvik first explored the problem in 2015, the technology has been patented, and Gridguard and Skjelvik themselves are part of the Smartgrid cluster.
High costs in both Norway and internationally
Gridguard estimates that around 74,000 poles in Norway are damaged by woodpeckers each year, which represents about 2.5 percent of the power grid. The resulting annual costs are somewhere between 70-260 million kroner.
With 37 percent of the world's power grids built from timber, and woodpeckers found in large parts of the northern hemisphere, the two entrepreneurs see a large market for their product.
And the problem is not new. In a 1995 report from the Norwegian Institute of Natural Research , 67 percent of the then 179 energy utilities surveyed said they had problems with woodpecker damage to the power grid.
Often when wooden poles break as a result of storms or trees falling over the lines, rot or woodpecker damage is a contributing factor. Poles that are already damaged are more likely to break than undamaged poles, according to the founders of Gridguard.
The alternative to using wooden posts is to use metal or composite materials.
“ It is more resource-intensive to make such poles, also in terms of sustainability. The raw material for wooden poles literally grows out of the ground,” says Skjelvik.
Handles natural challenges in a gentle way
There are seven different species of woodpecker in Norway alone. The distribution of the various species varies, but there are woodpeckers in most forest areas in southern Norway. Woodpeckers depend on wood to find food, nests and hiding places. They usually nest in cavities in trees or pairs of wooden posts. They often carve out the holes themselves, or use existing cavities.
But woodpeckers don't just peck to make holes for nests or to get eating larvae out of trees. They have another activity that makes noise but is harmless to the tree or the wooden post: drumming. Woodpeckers are territorial by nature, meaning they don't want to settle in the vicinity of other woodpeckers. The drumming is done to signal presence, mark territory, and attract a mate.
This drumming is faster than the pecking that makes holes, and varies from woodpecker species to woodpecker species. The technology behind the new patent by Skjelvik and GridGuard is able to distinguish the different species by identifying the drumming rhythm.
When the sensor detects that the woodpecker starts drumming on the pole, the drumming pattern is recorded and fine-tuned parameters in the box identify the species, send a signal to another sensor on a nearby pole, and play back the sound of the same species.
– This is a gentle way of dealing with a natural problem. We use the language of nature to prevent the woodpecker from becoming a pest. We try to get it to pecking at trees instead of posts. In other parts of human infrastructure we might see it as a pest problem, but the woodpecker is not a pest.
Gaute Bjerke-Busch
Gaute Bjerke-Busch
Intimidation didn't work.
But it wasn't straightforward to find a method that worked. Initially, the founders wanted to try scaring the woodpeckers away. During the first tests, the two founders were ready to play the sounds of birds of prey and scare them away that way.
– It didn't take long before a woodpecker appeared, and we tried to play all the sounds we had. It didn't have much effect, and we had to find other solutions, says Gaute Bjerke-Busch.
It wasn't until they started playing woodpecker sounds that they got results, and so they just had to keep working.
Started before the "Internet of things" was a thing
The two founders started brainstorming possible solutions to the problem long before they knew how to solve it, and especially before the technology they needed existed.
– “Internet of things” was not as established as a concept in 2015 as it is now, says Skjelvik.
The term "Internet of Things" is a term used to describe the interconnection of physical sensors or devices in networks, so that the devices can be remotely controlled or information from sensors can be shared.
In addition to the woodpecker deterrent, the GridScout box contains several measuring units that provide a condition report on the pole. There is also a system for sending data from the measuring units to the customer.
– When we found out that we had a solution to the woodpecker problem, we saw that we had something unique that gave us an entry into this market. We have also moved on to other problems in the industry, and have several sensors in the same box.
Stig Skjelvik
Stig Skjelvik
The challenge of how the boxes would talk to each other and send signals to the power companies has, as with much else with GridScout, been developed over time.
Good industry collaboration is important
The technology is still being tested, and the two founders believe that collaboration with various players in the power industry is important.
“ We wouldn’t have been able to access the power grid without collaborating with the companies. We’ve learned a lot about how the sensors work, but not least what the power industry needs and how they think,” says Bjerke-Büsch.
There are now around 500 sensors on electricity poles in several locations in Norway, around Røros, in Western Norway and in Southern Norway.
– They have to be out in the elements for a long time to test that they can tolerate the beating they will receive, says Bjerke-Büsch.
Will contribute to improving security of supply
Fortunately, major power outages are relatively rare in Norway, but the consequences of people being without power for a long time can be serious. In some places, cables for internet and telephony also run through the same poles.
Figures from NVE show that the delivery reliability of electricity in 2023 was 99.974 percent . This means that only 0.026 percent of the electrical energy did not reach end users due to faults or outages.
On average, each electricity customer experienced 1.50 power outages lasting more than 3 minutes. Electricity customers who experienced at least one long-term power outage were without power for an average of 3 hours and 26 minutes in 2023.
The founders believe the sensors can be useful for power companies both for checking the condition of and planning maintenance of the poles, but also when an accident occurs.
“ It is estimated that about half of the time it takes to repair a power outage is spent locating the fault. With our sensors, power companies can get better notification of where the fault is,” says Skjelvik.
