Over the last month there have been 3 times when copper thieves have broken into the local substation to steal copper wire, as this is worth nearly $5 per kilo as scrap metal. So far they have blown up a lot of stuff at the complex where I live, along with doing a signifigant amount of damage to installations around as well. The local coffee shop has had his lights, computers and coffee maker blown up each time that they have struck, and the houses along the road similarly.
By my place the photocell that controls the general lighting blew up twice, a number of garage door controllers have blown up, neighbours have had fridges, microwaves, clocks, computers, lights and modems along with TV sets blow up as well.
The thieves steal the earth wiring and the cabling for the street lighting, as that will not immediately be noticed, stripping back the cabling to expose the sheathing then stripping the copper earth wiring out of the steel armour. They then finally remove the neutral bus bar, and then disappear the same way that they came in. This leaved the balancing of the 3 phase supply up for pot luck, whichever phase has the highest load will be fine, but the other 2 phases will rise up till they balance, so you can get 60VAC on the heavily loaded phase, with 250VAC to 380VAC on the other 2 phases.
Pictures are the open manhole they use to get access to the cables in the substation.
The stolen lighting control panel. There should be cabling, breakers and contactors there on the steel frame, along with cabling to the photocell and the wiring out to the street.
The neutral connection to the transformer. They rarely steal this cable as it is an aluminium cable worth $1 per kilo. If they have time though it will go.
This is what was saving my electronics, a VDR equipped plugtop. It made the ultimate sacrifice to protect the equipment from overload. I have a few more in place as well, around a dozen so far, and I will make up some more out of the big bag of V250LA40A varistors I have. Better order more, only 16 left
This poor lamp is on 24/7 lighting a stairwell, it did not survive the second time, and I only got to fix it this Sunday, after the third time. Others did survive, but blew out the lamps and the starters from the overvoltage. It should have lasted a lot more than the 15 odd years it has so far.
