By Houda Mzioudet.
Tripoli, 25 August 2013:
An explosion and fire in an electricity transformer brought power cuts to areas of Reyayna yesterday. . . .[restrict]Some locals blamed the outage on an attack in which at least one grenade had been thrown into the unit at Al Awiniya, 25 kilometres west of Reyayna.
However GECOL spokesman Lutfi Ghuma told the Libya Herald that the blaze had been caused by a fault in the transformer. It has been extinguished in less than half an hour by fire fighters and engineers immediately moved in to repair the damage.
Transformers, which generally use insulating oil, require regular maintenance to keep them running safely. However even properly serviced, they are still vulnerable to lightning strikes or power surges on the system, the latter occasionally occurring at the end of a power cut.
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