Do Insects Also Conduct Electricity?

Do Insects Conduct Electricity? The Hidden Risk in Data Centers

Yes. A living insect's body is mostly water and body fluids, and that makes it conductive. When an insect crawls across live contacts inside a power supply or onto a circuit board, its body can become the bridge for a short circuit.

Insects such as cockroaches and ants are drawn to electronics because they offer what insects look for: tight, dark and warm spaces. Power supplies, routers and network cabinets all qualify, and they can collect insects, droppings and eggs over time.

When data center managers think about contamination, dust, zinc whiskers and corrosive gases are the usual suspects. Insects rarely make the list, yet research confirms that they conduct electricity, and the risk is real and preventable.

What does science say about insects and electricity?

A study published in the US National Institutes of Health's PubMed Central, Body Water-Mediated Conductivity Actualizes the Insect-Control Functions of Electric Fields in Houseflies, looked at how electricity moves through an insect's body.

The researchers placed adult houseflies (Musca domestica) in static and dynamic electric fields. Dehydrated flies showed no electrical response. Hydrated, living flies did. The conclusion is that the water inside the insect's body is what conducts the current.

There is a nuance about the outer shell. Entomology Today, published by the Entomological Society of America, notes that the insect cuticle, the outer skeleton made mostly of chitin, behaves as a dielectric and resists current. That applies only to the dry shell. The inside of the body is wet and conductive, and an insect that is crushed or dies on live parts exposes those fluids directly.

What does this mean inside a data center?

The research describes conductivity in laboratory conditions. Inside a data hall, the same physics meets live hardware: power supply interiors, bus bar contacts and the tightly spaced traces of a printed circuit board.

How do insects get into data centers?

Many people assume a data center is sealed. In practice there are many small openings:

• Service ducts and utility penetrations through walls and floors.
• Cracks and gaps around doors, especially loading docks.
• Deliveries of new equipment and the cardboard it comes in.
• Cable penetrations and floor tile cut-outs that were never sealed.

Once inside, insects move toward the warmth of operating servers and power units. They shelter behind racks, in subfloor voids and in cable trays, which are the hardest places to inspect and the places with the most live electrical parts.

In Saudi Arabia and the wider Gulf, the same routes also let in fine desert dust, which can carry insect fragments and other organic debris with it. This can be found more for the built data centers in newly developed desert areas near the major cities. Local conditions are covered in data center cleaning in Saudi Arabia.

How does an insect cause a short circuit?

When a living insect enters an energized space, such as the inside of a power supply, the area across bus bar contacts or the gap between PCB traces, its body fluids bridge two points at different voltages. This creates an unintended current path: a short circuit.

The result can be immediate. The component may be destroyed, a protection circuit may trip, or in the worst case a local fire may start.

The risk does not end when the insect dies. Dried remains, shed skins, egg cases and droppings are organic debris. Over time they hold moisture, can become slightly conductive and add to corrosion on contacts and board traces. This is one of the routes to circuit board failure inside data centers.

What does an outage cost?

A 2016 study by the Ponemon Institute with Emerson Network Power, now Vertiv, found that an unplanned data center outage cost $8,851 per minute on average, and $740,357 per outage. The study covered 63 US data center organizations.

Beyond the direct cost, there is damage to reputation and possible penalties under service level agreements. Set against those figures, a year of professional cleaning and pest prevention is a small expense.

What does the data center industry recommend?

Insect prevention and dust control share the same entry routes, so they share the same measures:

1. Filter all incoming air. MERV-rated filtration, as recommended in the ASHRAE TC 9.9 particulate guidelines, stops both dust and small insects carried in the air.
2. Keep the technical space at positive pressure, so any gap pushes air out instead of drawing it in.
3. Seal cable penetrations, floor tile cut-outs and wall services.
4. Control the entrances with contamination control sticky mats and keep cardboard and packaging out of the data hall.
5. Clean subfloor voids, overhead cable trays and rack interiors regularly, to remove the dust and organic matter that attract insects.
6. Work with a licensed pest control provider on monitoring traps and on which treatments are safe near IT equipment.

Dust control and insect prevention are one program. Seal the room, keep it clean and watch the entrances, and you deal with both risks at once.