A couple of years ago, a utility company in the Southeast experienced power outages due to rats chewing control cables in Florida substations. The utility reached out to Southwire Co., Carrollton, Ga., for a solution.

Besides power outages, rodent damage to cables can pose multiple, often expensive problems, including electrical shorts, short circuits, malfunctioning equipment and appliances, and overheating wires. And some of these problems can lead to more significant problems, such as fires.

Exorbitant costs also can result and include replacement of wires, lost labor, downtime, disruption to operations and ongoing maintenance needs.

“It wasn’t that there aren’t rodent-resistant products already out there, but they [the utility company] wanted a specific application, and they were already purchasing Southwire products,” said Yuhsin Hawig, vice president of CableTechSupport services and engineering at Southwire.

Included in the growing ranks of manufacturers that produce rat-resistant electrical wiring and infrastructure-related products besides Southwire are Schneider, Corning, HellermannTyton, Techflex and Synergychem.

For Southwire, Hawig oversees a multidisciplined technical team of 20 electrical, mechanical and chemical engineers who address upwards of 20,000 customer requests annually. These include frequently asked questions and creative field solutions. Only a handful of those requests warrant innovation due to the expense of research, testing and development, which must be justified by profit potential.

And rodent-resistant cable and other products seem to spell plenty of profit potential.

Los Angeles recently surpassed Chicago in Orkin Pest Control’s annual ranking of the rattiest city in the nation, but not because rodent populations in the Windy City are declining. It’s because climate change is causing rat populations to boom in southern climates.

And just this month, another pest-control company, Pesteze, posted a blog offering tips to prevent rodent damage to electrical infrastructure. The blog suggests using rodent-resistant cable and steel conduit, along with shoring up concrete openings at cable entry points. It also suggests getting an electrical inspection if a rat problem is suspected.

“[Rats] chew on wires not because they are hungry, but to sharpen their teeth,” Hawig said. “They’re a lot like babies teething. They love plastic insulation. For them it’s like chewing gum.”

Many rodent-resistant electrical products are made from materials that are less appealing to rodents, such as specialized plastics or compounds that are extra-tough, including metal or . Some products include repellents that taste bad to rodents, but these can sometimes carry carcinogenic warnings and may cause skin and eye irritation to installers.

Hawig’s idea was to develop a wire covering that would be abhorrent and not enticing to rodents. The result was a corrugated copper sheath rats could sink their teeth into but have a tough time breaking free from. Once free, they would never want to repeat the experience.

The utility initially turned down Hawig’s new product idea, citing cost, but a couple of months later, after considering the expense of power outages and repairs, production was a go.