Electrical and related buildings technology
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. read more..
Request to look at induction motor starting time have come up a few times on the site. Hopefully in this post, I give you guys some idea on how to calculate this. Failing that, hopefully at least som... read more..
Problems on achieving maximum voltage drop within an installation come up often. Depending where you live, local regulations will have different limits on maximum allowable voltage drop, however the int... read more..
A recurring theme on our forums is cable sizing. Now many installations are unique and require special consideration. However, a lot of the time things are just repeated. When looking at low voltage pow... read more..
Estimating maximum demand is a topic frequently discussed. Working out how much power to allow for a building can be very subjective . Allowing too much power results in additional equipment, increased ... read more..
Three phase systems are derived from three separate windings, either connected in delta or star (wye). Each winding can be treated separately, leading to the idea that the load in each winding can be vi... read more..
The inventor of the first visible light-emitting diode makes history again this year as it begins to show customers a 40-watt replacement GE Energy Smart® LED bulb available later this year or early... read more..
IEC 62305 'Protection against lightning' requires a risk assessment be carried out to determine the characteristics of any lightning protection system to be installed. There is a lot of hype about about... read more..
I've been considering a blog on the 110 or 230 Volt issue for a while. While browsing the Internet I came across a great summary by Borat over at engineering.com. He ... read more..
The new standard IEC 61439 replaces the old 60439. Compared to the old standard, the new 61439 is a more clearly defined and takes into account the assembly of pre-tested designs. .
Some key... read more..
It wasn't so long ago I was telling someone that I don't use rules of thumb as most things are easily calculated anyhow. As it turns out I last week I ended up using what can only be describ... read more..
The calculation of current in a three phase system has been brought up on our site feedback and is a discussion I seem to get involved in every now and again. While some colleagues prefer to remember... read more..
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...
This is the second post in a series of two on periodic electrical inspections. In the first post, I discussed how often inspections should be carried out...
When looking at the design of a lighting scheme it is useful to have an understanding on the nature of light itself and some of the basic theory associated...
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...
Control theory looks at how systems work and are controlled from a mathematical view. This note gives a brief introduction to some of the concepts – more...
For the past few years I have reading eBooks on my HTC touch phone. On and off I have debated buying an eReader and recently purchased a Sony PRS-300 ...
The mobile phone was born in 1973. They were the size of a brick and weighed a couple of kg, making them difficult to fit into your pocket. At a few thousand...
If you are wondering what happened to our cable notes, the short answer is that we have moved them to myCableEngineering.com. The "Knowledge Base" at...
The image (reproduced from IEC 60909) shows a typical fault in an ac system. From the illustration it can seen that there is an initial dc component ...
Dielectrics (insulating materials for example) when subjected to a varying electric field, will have some energy loss. The varying electric field causes...
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