Worksafe Victoria is investigating the death of a worker in his 50s after an explosion at the Yallourn Power Station in eastern Victoria.

Energy Australia described the man as a "popular and hard working employee" from the Latrobe Valley, who had been with the company for 33 years.  He was working on a generator unit after an outage at about 4:00 PM Monday afternoon.  A high voltage circuit breaker exploded, causing serious injuries including burns over much of the worker's body. 

When Ambulance Victoria paramedics arrived, he was in a critical condition and was evacuated to hospital in Melbourne via helicopter, where he was pronounced dead on Tuesday afternoon.

Yallourn chief Mark Pearson described the man as a "great worker" and said Energy Australia would provide counseling to coworkers and support to his surviving family as the investigation commences.

"Something has gone wrong in the process, but as a consequence he has been badly burned," said Mr. Pearson.  "We don't know what's happened, so at the moment we have WorkSafe and Energy Safe Victoria on site, commencing their investigations and we'll continue to work with them to assist them to determine the root cause."