Why is electricity so hard to understand?
It's been a busy few months on different projects or busy couple of decades depending on how I look at it. I can say that on the odd (frequent) occasion...
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...
1,000 kV UHV First for China
At the beginning of the year China put the world's first 1,000 kV UHV transmission system into operation. Transmitting power at over a million volts is...
IEC 60287 Current Capacity of Cables - Rated Current
In the previous note we looked at the approach taken by the standard to the sizing of cables and illustrated this with an example. We then looked at one...
Voltage Drop in Installations - Concepts
Problems on achieving maximum voltage drop within an installation come up often. Depending where you live, local regulations will have different limits...
Power Factor
Power factor is the ratio between the real power (P in kW) and apparent power (S in kVA) drawn by an electrical load. The reactive power (Q in kVAr)...
The ac resistance of conductors
In a previous article I looked at the dc resistance of conductors and in this article we turn our attention to ac resistance. If you have not read the...
What happened to the cable notes?
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...
DC Motor Operation
Coils of wire on the rotor carry a d.c. current which generates a magnetic field. A stator magnetic field is created using either permanent magnets or...
Multimeter
Multimeters are undoubtedly the most common item of electrical test equipment in use. Often it is the first piece of equipment people will turn to when...