Lighting - Lamps

By Steven McFadyen on 5/29/2012 1:28 PM

Lamps are the essential part of any luminaire. These are the light generating components. Since the advent of electrical lighting in the middle of the 19th century, multiple types of lamps have been ... read more..


Voltage Drop in Installations - Concepts

By Steven McFadyen on 9/27/2011 7:50 AM

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..


Differential protection, the good old days

By Steven McFadyen on 10/3/2011 1:52 PM

This morning I was explaining how differential protection works to a junior engineer. To give him something to read I opened up the NPAG (Network Protection and Automation Guide, by Areva) and turned to... read more..


Back to basics - the Watt (or kW)

By Steven McFadyen on 8/4/2011 1:13 AM

When thinking about watts (W) or kilowatt (kW = 1000 W) it can be useful too keep in mind the fundamental ideas behind the unit. Watt is not a pure electrical or mechanical unit, but is a measure of the... read more..


Smarter Electrical Distribution

By Steven McFadyen on 4/24/2011 2:52 AM

The other day I came across an article in Technology Review on the development of a smart transformer. A professor at North Carolina State University is developing a transistor based transformer ca... read more..


Lead us, Warleader

By Steven McFadyen on 3/16/2011 10:56 PM

Delum, who had watched all in silence, his face empty of expression, now spoke in turn. ' "Lead us, Warleader, into glory."'

Reading is something I do regularly and at the moment I'm workin... read more..


New Mail Chimp

By Steven McFadyen on 9/26/2011 6:54 AM

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 is a fantastic product (and free of cost), to impro... read more..


Paths of Flight

By Steven McFadyen on 11/29/2010 10:26 PM

GE have put together a time-lapse video shown flight take-off and landings at some airports. An interesting view: read more..


Why is electricity so hard to understand?

By Steven McFadyen on 3/1/2011 12:48 AM

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 when trying to explain something (i.e. electricit... read more..


IEEE Winds of Change

By Steven McFadyen on 9/30/2010 3:25 AM

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 videos are excellent. Each video is around 10 m... read more..


Getting Started with Patents

By Steven McFadyen on 7/21/2010 11:55 PM

If you have a great idea or invent something the last thing you want is someone to steal the idea. One of the things you can do is protect the intellectual property of on the idea by using patents. read more..


MIT OpenCourseWare

By Steven McFadyen on 7/7/2010 11:41 PM

MIT OpenCourseWare, makes the materials used in teaching all MIT subjects available on the Web, free of charge, to any user in the world. read more..




Getting Started with Patents

If you have a great idea or invent something the last thing you want is someone to steal the idea. One of the things you can do is protect the intellectual...

How Electrical Circuits Work

If you have no idea how electrical circuits work, or what people mean then they talk about volts and amps, hopefully I can shed a bit light.  I’m intending...

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 Steps to Low Voltage Power Cable Selection and Sizing

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...

Three Phase Power Simplified

A single phase system is perhaps the most common type of system most people are familiar with. This is what people have in their homes and what appliances...

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...

Voltage Levels – Confused?

I was having a conversation the other day about voltage levels.  While everyone was in agreement that low voltage was 1000 V and less, there was more confusion...

International System of Units (SI System)

The International System of Units (abbreviated SI) is the world's most widely used system of units.  The system consists of a set of units and prefixes...

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...

Write your best report

Years ago I was told that you should always try to write the best report you can.  Many years later I still think on this as one of the better pieces of...

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