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Comment by cryptozeus | Hacker News Reader

The photo of tesla battery pack behind the bars is striking.

At $6500 it's over a years worth over a years average salary [using numbeo.com rates] , and more importantly it's useful to anyone else suffering from intermittent electric which they all are.

It be worth stealing anywhere, provided you ok (or dont care) with possible consequenses if getting caught. Resale, private usage.

Guess the gate is eletricfied, as the bars look easy to get through.

Think that would depend on how easy they are to setup.

> Guess the gate is eletricfied

Yes, but only as long as the battery has power!

That would be quite easy, lay a thick metal rod on cage and let it discharge the battery fully before hand held angle grinder cuts through the cage.

>Guess the gate is eletricfied

doesn't look like it. it's not isolated from the ground, so any electricity is going straight into the earth. the bigger deterrent is the barbed wire, but you can get pass that (and the electric fence, if any) with a fiberglass ladder.

A wooden ladder is even easier (though heavier).

Stealing is a major problem in telecoms design in Africa - you also get it (cable thefts) in developed countries when the coper price is high.

Friend when she was in a poor part of Africa noted that the local cell tower had two armed guards. Her host told that a few years prior they had a single guard. Thieves came and killed him with a chainsaw and stole the generators. So now the guards are armed with machine guns and there are two of them.

Are you sure they were using machine guns? That would either imply they are part of the military of zimbabwe's gun laws are very loose.

I bet it helps to yell "Stop in the name of the law!" when thieves with chainsaws run towards you.

> At $6500 it's over a years worth average salary

It's approximately six years of a typical income in Zimbabwe at the moment. It's definitely a lot of money, makes sense to lock it up.

In South Africa, we're having a problem of heightened theft of battery packs that love in cellphone base stations. When desperation is high and crime rampant, there are no holy cows

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