Notes

110 or 230 Volts

By Steven McFadyen on 8/2/2009 10:50 PM

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..

Gas Insulated or Air Insulated Switchgear

By Steven McFadyen on 8/11/2009 2:32 AM

Various arguments exist around SF6 Gas Insulated (GIS) and Air Insulated (AIS) medium voltage switchgear. Recently we had to change a GIS design to AIS due to an instruction from&nbs... read more..

I was reminded of Occam's Razor while reading a book. It's quite a simple principal of logic which has stood the test of time and is accepted as central to scientific thought. Without thi... read more..

Nikola Tesla

By Steven McFadyen on 6/16/2009 6:01 AM

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 pursue a career in electrical engineering. He sta... read more..

Write your best report

By Steven McFadyen on 5/11/2009 5:49 AM

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 advice. Not only does this apply ... read more..

Cost Performance and Time

By Steven McFadyen on 5/6/2009 3:29 AM

Often us engineers get so bogged down in equations, using software, producing drawings and writing specifications that this becomes the sole focus. Good engineering design needs to go b... read more..

UPS Sizing - Rules of Thumb

By Steven McFadyen on 4/30/2009 12:56 AM

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..

Thomas Edison

By Steven McFadyen on 3/21/2009 10:40 PM

American inventor Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milan, Ohio on February 11, 1847. He was the youngest of seven children and received little formal schooling. Most of his education happened at home unde... read more..

Software Usage Guidelines

By Steven McFadyen on 3/29/2009 4:41 AM

Using software in our work is essential for most of us and we are becoming even more dependant on it's use. While software is a great asset, many times using it can be more problematic ... read more..

Aluminium Windings - Dry Type Transformers

By Steven McFadyen on 2/25/2009 3:19 AM

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 unaware that many manufactures’ use alu... read more..

Cable Trumps

By Steven McFadyen on 4/21/2010 2:45 AM

Bored at work and would rather be playing trump card game with you son. The next best thing (or not) maybe the online cable trump card game from AEI Cables. read more..

Welcome back Bottle

By Steven McFadyen on 10/9/2011 2:23 PM

‘Kept looking at a card, y’see? Kept looking at it. Welcome back Bottle. Gods below welcome home.

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Cable Sheath and Armour Loss

When sizing cables, the heat generated by losses within any sheath or armour need to be evaluated. When significant, it becomes a factor to be considered...

Capacitor Theory

Capacitors are widely used in electrical engineering for functions such as energy storage, power factor correction, voltage compensation and many others...

Low Voltage Circuit Breakers

Circuit breakers are switching devices whose primary function is to isolate parts of an electrical distribution system in the even of abnormal conditions...

Photovoltaic (PV) - Electrical Calculations

Photovoltaic (PV) cells (sometimes called solar cells) convert solar energy into electrical energy. Every year more and more PV systems are installed...

Electric Motors

Collection of links to various places with useful motor information. I’ll try and return to the page every now and again to update it with any motor notes...

Random Numbers

Using laser optical pulses the random number generator utilizes the time between arrival of random photos to generate the numbers, ensuring true accuracy...

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...

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...

DC Component of Asymmetrical Faults

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 ...

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...

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