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Energy Australia has been fined $1.5m after a veteran Yallourn power station employee suffered fatal burns to 90% of his body in an electrical explosion. Graeme Edwards had worked at the power station in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley for more than 30 years when he volunteered to connect a high-voltage cable to the segment of the power station he worked on.
As reported by The Guardian, the racking-in procedure involves placing a circuit breaker into position in a cabinet while wires are live or energised.
Edwards was fully trained and had undergone his required three-yearly retraining two months before his death in November 2018.
An infill panel above the 6.6kW control panel he was working on was loose and at just the slightest pressure it exposed him to live wires.
On 12 November, as he worked on the unit, an arc flash and explosion occurred while he was racking in, believed to be the result of the control cable making contact with live components.
Edwards suffered serious burns to 90% of his body and died in hospital the next day.
Energy Australia Yallourn pleaded guilty to three charges of breaching the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
The company admitted failing to properly install and inspect the infill panel, failing to properly train employees to connect the cables, and failing to provide and require employees to wear appropriate arc-rated personal protective equipment while they worked on circuit breakers on live high-voltage switchboards.