From the category archives: Power Systems

Power systems theory - generation, transmissions and distribution

Star-Delta Motor Starting - Performance

By Steven McFadyen on 7/10/2014 3:51 PM

Many questions sent in to the site are in connection with motor starting and in particular star-delta.  For all but the simplest application, there is merit in performing a more detailed study.&... read more..


How a Digital Substation Works

By Steven McFadyen on 3/2/2014 12:06 PM

Traditionally substations have used circuit breakers, current transformers (CT), voltage transformers (VT) and protection relays all wired together using copper cables.  With advances in digital... read more..


RLC Circuit, Resistor Power Loss - some Modelica experiments

By Steven McFadyen on 1/20/2014 1:32 PM

Modelica is an open source (free) software language for modelling complex systems. Having never used it before, I thought I would download a development platform and see how it stacked up.  This... read more..


Harmonised Cable Codes and Colours

By Steven McFadyen on 8/28/2013 2:17 PM

Within Europe the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) has standardised the both the designation and colour of cables.   These are published in CENELEC document... read more..


UPS - Uninterruptible Power Supply

By Steven McFadyen on 8/21/2013 3:21 PM

A UPS is an uninterruptible power supply.  It is a device which maintains a continuous supply of electrical power, even in the event of failure of the mains (utility) supply.  A UPS is inst... read more..


Cables for MV Power Distribution - Earthed versus Unearthed Systems

By Jeson Pitt on 8/12/2013 12:37 PM

Power cables can basically be classified into earthed and unearthed cables, where earthed and unearthed refer to the application for which the cable is used. Earthed system refers to a three phase syste... read more..


Photovoltaic (PV) - Electrical Calculations

By Steven McFadyen on 7/11/2013 2:46 PM

Photovoltaic (PV) cells (sometimes called solar cells) convert solar energy into electrical energy.  Every year more and more PV systems are installed.  With this growing application, it's ... read more..


Fire Resistant and Fire Retardant Cables

By Steven McFadyen on 7/4/2013 1:31 PM

Fire resistant and fire retardant cable sheaths are design to resist combustion and limit the propagation of flames. Low smokes cables have a sheath designed to limit the amount of smoke and toxic ha... read more..


Capacitors - Energy Storage Application

By Steven McFadyen on 6/29/2013 8:24 PM

Capacitors have numerous applications in electrical and electronic applications.  This note examines the use of capacitors to store electrical energy.  The sidebar shows details of a typical c... read more..


Introduction to Cathodic Protection

By Steven McFadyen on 4/25/2013 12:53 PM

If two dissimilar metals are touching and an external conducting path exists, corrosion of one the metals can take place.  Moisture or other materials acting as an electrolyte between the metals... read more..


Frame Leakage Protection

By Steven McFadyen on 4/18/2013 1:12 PM

While not as popular as it once was, frame leakage protection does still have some use in some circumstances.  In essence frame leakage is an earth fault type protection.  A current transfo... read more..


What is Aircraft Ground Power

By Steven McFadyen on 4/11/2013 12:53 PM

Ever wondered what kind of power an aircraft uses when parked at the airport stand.

Normally the aircraft generates it own power, but when parked with the engines switched off power provided ... read more..


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Introduction to Cathodic Protection

If two dissimilar metals are touching and an external conducting path exists, corrosion of one the metals can take place.  Moisture or other materials...

Large Hadron Collider

The 27 km, Euro 6 billion  Collider lies on the border between France and Switzerland, took nearly 30 years to complete.  Some of the lofty goals for the...

New Mail Chimp

We've been sending out Newsletters on a regular basis for a few weeks now. To do this we have been using Google's Feedburner service. While Feedburner...

Aluminium Windings - Dry Type Transformers

The other day I was talking to a colleague who is a building services consultant.  Despite regularly specifying dry-type/cast resin transformers he was...

Our internet address and Vanity URLs

Visitors who like to type web address rather then click menus may be interested in how our URL structure works.

What is a rectifier transformer?

I've recently come across this question a couple times browsing the internet. Decided to give a quick answer here. A rectifier transformer is a transformer...

Fault Calculation - Per Unit System

Per unit fault calculations is a method whereby system impedances and quantities are normalised across different voltage levels to a common base.  By removing...

How to Write an Electrical Note

Electrical notes are a collaborative collection of electrical engineering information and educational material. Any registered user can add content. ...

IEEE Winds of Change

IEEE TV has a part series of videos on wind power and it's implication. For a really good overview to the technologies and issues around wind power, these...

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...

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