Steven McFadyen's Articles

Steven is a Chartered electrical engineering consultant with considerable experience on major internationally recognised and award winning projects in Europe, South East Asia, and the Middle East. His expertise has been called on for numerous technically challenging projects in power systems, airports, rail, mining, pharmaceutical, datacentre, and other industries.



Railway Electrification Voltages

This post is quick introduction and overview to different railway electrification voltages used in answer to a question sent in via email. While there...

Periodic Electrical Installation Inspection – How Often?

How often installations are inspected is up to the owner of the installation, provided such durations do not exceed any regulatory maximums in force. ...

Lightning Protection and Earth Electrode Resistance

Most installations involve some form of lightning protection system which is connected to an earth electrode.  The function of the earth electrode is to...

Software Usage Guidelines

Using software in our  work is essential for most of us and we are becoming even more dependant on it's use.  While software is a great asset, many times...

Capacitors - Energy Storage Application

Capacitors have numerous applications in electrical and electronic applications.  This note examines the use of capacitors to store electrical energy....

Understanding Circuit Breaker Markings

IEC 60947 is the circuit breaker standard and covers the marking of breakers in detail. Any manufacturer following this standard should comply with the...

GE's Shingijutsu Factory

GE's latest thinking on product manufacturing is he Shingijutsu philosophy or Lean production system. They have started applying this at the Louisville...

Batteries

A battery consists of one or more cells, each of which use stored chemical energy to produce electrical energy, There are many types of cells and these...

8 Motor parts and common faults

Straight forward list of some common motor faults.  If I have missed any other common faults, please take a bit of time to add them in as a comment below...

Gas Insulated or Air Insulated Switchgear

Various arguments exist around SF6 Gas Insulated (GIS) and Air Insulated (AIS) medium voltage switchgear. Recently we had to change a GIS design to AI...

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