Harmonised Cable Codes and Colours
Within Europe the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) has standardised the both the designation and colour of cables. ...
Why use catalogues
I'm a fan of using manufacturers catalogues. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, if your involved in the purchase of equipment, you will likely...
RLC Circuit, Resistor Power Loss - some Modelica experiments
Modelica is an open source (free) software language for modelling complex systems. Having never used it before, I thought I would download a development...
Introduction to Traction Substations
Following on from my post on railway electrification voltages, I thought an introduction to traction substations would be a good idea. Traction substations...
IEC 61439 Verification Methods
The (relatively new) switchgear and control gear standard, IEC 61439 'Low-voltage switchgear and controlgear assemblies' has three methods which can be...
Voltage Levels to IEC 60038
The standard aims to consolidate AC and traction voltages within the industry and defines the following bands:
band 1 - A.C. systems 100 V to 1...
Star-Delta Motor Starting - Performance
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...
Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla was born exactly at midnight on July 10, 1856 in the tiny village of Smiljan, Lika in Croatia. In his late teens, Tesla left the village to...
Bows and Arrows
It starts with me reading one of the Horrible History books with my son (Groovy Greeks). Arrows were mentioned which lead to the discussion of the bodkin...
Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC)
Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) is the study of coordinating electromagnetic fields give off equipment, with the withstand (compatibility) of other...