While on standby I had to get the streetlights going at the Mc Leod substation, West Auckland which controls a large area of streetlights, about (5000 SL's).
area: Gleneden, Kelston, Glendene which were in the dark after initially was thought the lightcell failed on the substation roof.
The local faultman had switched the lights on and off manually the night before.
I didn't have a spare one with me but I did have a good quality electromechanical AEG astronomical timeclock, hence this was my temporary solution.
Then a 33 kV fault happened in Albany so I had to prioritise that job first.
At around 02.00 hrs that morning I drove by and the whole area was dark again, O deer the clock had stopped, but that wasn't the problem.
The master relay, just a 240 Volts 2 pole octal had high resistance contacts and by tapping it sparks within made it make and break the 6 outgoing SL circuits. I had a spare one of those and fitted a new one, problem solved. As I always do , I took a load check just in case.
Well this 10 Amp relay had a steady current of 13 Amps inductive load on it hence it's demise.
On the control panel 3 out of the 6 neons were going but the fuses were ok.
So I replaced the faulty Neons, Not easy but with some tube and wrenching them out I got 2 out eventually and one broke off.
Well, worry about that after a nights sleep.
Next morning, at the depot one of my workmates saw the Neons and saw a hole blown into the base of it. I have never seen that before but 2 Neons had actually a hole blown in the base by an electrical surge.
I will post the photo's via Trumpy so you can have a look at these Neons.
I accidentally cracked one of the Neons with my car keys in my pocket, but the base is still intact.
Later that day I heard from a faultman that lightning a few weeks ago had hit the pilots and obviously found a good neutral by flashing over in the Neon lamps base and frying the internal resistor.
