Most fires happen unexpectedly in a home, as reported on the Singleton Law Firm website that also gives statistics on wildfires. Whether you have a poor electrical system or your fire is started while you are cooking, you will have to think fast. Many people do not keep fire extinguishers in their home because they think that a fire will never happen to them. Although it is very important to own a fire extinguisher and know how to use it, there are ways you can put that flaming fire out with items around your home.

Sand: Sand or dirt is a great way to put out a fire if you don’t have a fire extinguisher. If you are outdoors when the fire takes place simply grab a bucket of sand out of your child’s sandbox, or some dirt out of the flower garden. Thinking quickly and throwing the dirt onto your fire will surely put it out quickly.

Water: Water will put out your fire as long as its not an electrical fire. Pouring water on a fire that started electrically could be very dangerous. To put out a fire with water, fill a bucket and quickly dump it over the fire continuing to fill buckets.

Baking Soda: This is a common ingredient that is found in most homes in the pantry. When baking soda is heated it produces CO2 gas, which is found in a fire extinguisher. Since the fire is getting carbon dioxide, it is not receiving the amount of oxygen it needs for the fire to stay burning. Simply pour as much baking soda that is needed to put the fire out.

Lastly, if you are unable to put out the fire by yourself and it starts spreading across your home, make sure to call the firefighters as soon as possible.  They may have to knock down a wall or even break some windows in order to fight the flames and get everything under control as quickly as possible. Just be sure to get assistance on fire damage insurance claims once the fire has been handled, this will help you get coverage for all the damages a lot quicker.

]]> http://www.sydenergy.com.au/blog/index.php/425/feed/ 0 http://www.sydenergy.com.au/blog/index.php/electric-shock-current/ http://www.sydenergy.com.au/blog/index.php/electric-shock-current/#respond Wed, 26 Nov 2014 00:31:48 +0000 http://www.sydenergy.com.au/blog/?p=421

As we’ve already know, electricity requires a complete path (circuit) to continuously flow. This is why the shock received from static electricity is only a momentary jolt: the flow of electrons is necessarily brief when static charges are equalized between two objects. Shocks of self-limited duration like this are rarely hazardous.

Without two contact points on the body for current to enter and exit, respectively, there is no hazard of shock. This is why birds can safely rest on high-voltage power lines without getting shocked: they make contact with the circuit at only one point.

           In order for electrons to flow through a conductor, there must be a voltage present to motivate them. Voltage, as you should recall, is always relative between two points. There is no such thing as voltage ”on” or ”at” a single point in the circuit, and so the bird contacting a single point in the above circuit has no voltage applied across its body to establish a current through it.

Follow Link to read more:

http://electrical-engineering-portal.com/electric-shock-current-where-does-it-go

Customer explanations…

While voltage sags and momentary interruptions cause the most widespread power quality problems, several other power quality disturbances can damage equipment, overheat equipment, disrupt processes, cause data loss, and annoy and upset customers. To prevent interruptions 3 Phase 600 Volt Service should be considered.

Often, customers complain of equipment failures, especially following power interruptions. Is it lightning? Voltage swells during faults? Some sort of switching transient? And in order to handle your customers’ complaints professionally, then you may consider providing your employees excellent customer service training to properly handle the complaints.

However, some possibilities of what happened are:

Overvoltages – Lightning and other system primary-side overvoltages can enter the facility and damage equipment.

Grounding – Poor facility grounding practices can introduce overvoltages at equipment from fault current.

Capacitive coupling – Reclose operations and other switching transients can create fast-rising voltage on the primary that capacitively couples through the transformer, causing a short pulse on the secondary and the need for transformer maintenance.

Inrush current – While recovering from a voltage sag or momentary interruption, the inrush current into some electronic equipment can blow fuses or fail semiconductor devices.

Unbalanced sags – Three-phase electronic equipment like adjustable- speed drives can draw excessive current during a single-phase sag
or other unbalanced sag. The current can blow fuses or fail the front-end power electronics.

Equipment aging – Some equipment is prone to failure during turn on, even without a voltage transient. The most obvious example is an incandescent light bulb. Over time, the filament weakens, and the bulb eventually fails, usually when turned on. At turn on, the rapid temperature rise and mechanical stress from the inrush can break the filament.

Follow link to read more:

http://electrical-engineering-portal.com/when-customer-complains-on-equipment-failure-caused-by-overvoltage

An IP telephony (IPT) system can provide small businesses with many tangible benefits. One small-business owner I know said staff productivity went up 65 percent after installing an IPT system, because workers weren’t wasting time tracking down colleagues or manually transferring calls from one desk to another.

If you’re considering an upgrade to your phone system, read on. I’ll be taking a look at which business functions you should consider in an IPT solution and how you can successfully and cost-effectively deploy such a system. For more background on IPT, check out last month’s column, “Building a Better Communications System ,” which provided an overview of small-business phone systems, including IPT solutions, with an eye toward helping you decide which one is right for your company.

Determining Your Objectives
Before making any changes to your existing phone system, you should answer two key questions:

1. What are the limitations and “pain points” of your current phone system? How does your existing phone system limit your employees and your business? For instance, are employees spending too much time transferring calls or playing voice-mail tag? Are you losing potential customers because they tire of being on hold?

2. What are your company’s primary business goals, and is your phone system helping you achieve them? Does your phone system help you serve your customers better? Are you getting the best phone service at the lowest cost possible? Will your phone system grow as your business does?

Knowing the answers to these questions will help you coordinate your needs and goals, both current and future, with your IPT system. You’ll know what features and capabilities the phone system needs from the start, and what you’ll likely need down the road. The inherent flexibility of an IP network means you can quickly add new functionality as needed. This will help prevent you from deploying more capabilities than you need–or not enough.

Phasing the Rollout
To ensure a smooth transition to an IPT system, it’s best to phase the rollout. Here’s the approach I suggest:

Phase 1: Build the foundation.
An IPT system requires a converged IP network at its foundation. On a converged IP network, phone calls travel over the internet as data, just like e-mail, instant messages, video and other traffic. Having one network for multiple purposes simplifies your administrative burden and reduces costs, because you no longer need to maintain multiple networks. You’ll also save on telecommunications costs and long-distance charges.

An IP network connects a variety of equipment (including computers and phones) using intelligent network devices such as routers and switches. Your data network probably is already connected by routers and/or switches. You just have to make sure that your current network can support your new IPT system. Your routers and switches should have built-in security and the ability to support increased traffic and additional functionality as your company grows.

Your IP network also should have “high availability,” meaning there’s minimum downtime. Consider adding a second, redundant IPT server to provide continuity should your phone system’s primary server go down. Your business goals will help you determine what level of redundancy your system needs.

Quality of service is important as well. QoS, as it’s often called, simply means that voice and video traffic on the IP network are given a higher priority than data. No one cares if an e-mail message arrives a few seconds late. But frequent delays in relaying your voice after you finish speaking would certainly be noticeable. The more advanced routers for small businesses include QoS as a feature that can be turned on when needed. No equipment upgrade is necessary.

In phase 1, you’ll likely have a basic IPT system that provides multiple direct-dial extensions along with voice mail that you can access using a phone, computer or other device. The system also will provide automated messaging and greeting services that perform tasks, such as routing incoming callers to the appropriate extensions.

To take full advantage of your IPT system, you should have IP phones. They look similar to traditional business phones, with buttons, handset and cradle. But they connect directly to the IP network, have large screens, and put many of an IP communications system’s features and functionality at the user’s fingertips.

To read more please follow link:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/180854

If you’ve ever sat watching a thunderstorm, with mighty lightning bolts darting down from the sky, you’ll have some idea of the power of electricity. A bolt of lightning is a sudden, massive surge of electricity between the sky and the ground beneath. The energy in a single lightning bolt is enough to light 100 powerful lamps for a whole day or to make a couple of hundred thousand slices of toast!

Electricity is the most versatile energy source that we have; it is also one of the newest: homes and businesses have been using it for not much more than a hundred years. Electricity has played a vital part of our past. But it could play a different role in our future, with many more businesses participating in these events. These companies are generating their own renewable electric power using solar cells and wind turbines. Let’s take a closer look at electricity and find out how it works!

What is electricity?

Electricity is a type of energy that can build up in one place or flow from one place to another. When electricity gathers in one place it is known as static electricity(the word static means something that does not move); electricity that moves from one place to another is called current electricity.

Static electricity

Static electricity often happens when you rub things together. If you rub a balloon against your jumper 20 or 30 times, you’ll find the balloon sticks to you. This happens because rubbing the balloon gives it an electric charge (a small amount of electricity). The charge makes it stick to your jumper like a magnet, because your jumper gains an opposite electric charge. So your jumper and the balloon attract one another like the opposite ends of two magnets.

Have you ever walked across a nylon rug or carpet and felt a slight tingling sensation? Then touched something metal, like a door knob or a faucet (tap), and felt a sharp pain in your hand? That is an example of an electric shock. When you walk across the rug, your feet are rubbing against it. Your body gradually builds up an electric charge, which is the tingling you can sense. When you touch metal, the charge runs instantly to Earth—and that’s the shock you feel.

Lightning is also caused by static electricity. As rain clouds move through the sky, they rub against the air around them. This makes them build up a huge electric charge. Eventually, when the charge is big enough, it leaps to Earth as a bolt of lightning. You can often feel the tingling in the air when a storm is brewing nearby. This is the electricity in the air around you.

http://www.explainthatstuff.com/electricity.html

Guidelines to Maintenance of Low Voltage Switchboard

Maintenance Benefits and Facilities

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A. Maintenance Program

A well-executed maintenance program can provide the following benefits:

1. Longer life of switchboard and fewer replacements;
2. Reduced time on repairs and overhauls, and the option of scheduling them at an opportune time;
3. Fewer failures with unexpected outages;
4. Timely detection of any undesirable operating conditions which require correction;
5. Improved plant performance and increased operating economies

B. Maintenance Records

A maintenance file should be established which should include the following:

1. A record of all installed switchboards and their maintenance schedule;
2. Nameplate data of all the equipment and its major components, instruction books, renewal parts lists, bulletins and drawings;
3. A list of all items which have to be inspected and what adjustments are to be checked;
4. A record of past inspections and test results.

C. Maintenance Tests

Maintenance tests are applicable as indicated:

1. Insulation resistance tests of the switchboards’ breakers and bus can be useful indetermining the condition of the insulation if they are performed regularly. Since definite limits cannot be given for satisfactory insulation resistance, a record must be kept of the readings and comparisons made. Deterioration of insulation and the need for corrective action can be recognized if the readings are progressively lower after each test.
2. High potential tests are not required and are not recommended except in special circumstances, such as after repairs or modifications to the equipment that included the primary circuit (bus assemblies).When such tests are necessary, they may be conducted using 75% of the standard 60-cycle test voltage for new equipment.

Please follow link to read more

http://electrical-engineering-portal.com/guidelines-to-maintenance-of-low-voltage-switchboard

Fact: One person is electrocuted every day in the workplace.

Fact: More people in the 25- to 44-year-old age group are electrocuted in the workplace than any other age group.

The above statistics are sobering, surprising, and worrisome. Every employer wants to protect their employees in the work environment, but it is often a matter of “how can we make the workplace safer” rather than “do I really need to make it safer”, and that’s why having the right safety equipment for  different types of work is important. You are reading this because you area looking for some electrical contractor job postings, and as such, you should understand this ahead of time. Look at the list of safety habits we have put together and try to learn them, and their reasons for being put into place. That way you can understand that employers will do what they can to ensure workers are safe, and they want to know what can be done to make that happen.

http://www.rendermagazine.com/articles/2010-issues/2010-october/2010-10-tech-topics/

Smoke alarms are a must and no home should be without them.

 Hard Wired Smoke Alarms
A hard wired smoke alarm is a 240 volt smoke alarm that is directly connected to the home’s electricity supply. It also has a battery backup in the event of a blackout.  The battery is long life lithium and it is fully built in so that it cannot be tampered with or removed.

Hard wired smoke alarms are preferred as they are very reliable over the long term. Hard wired smoke alarms can also be connected in parallel so that if one goes off, every smoke alarm starts to sound; increasing the likelihood that someone in the home will be alerted.  Hard wired smoke alarms also come with a test button so that you can ensure that it is working correctly & should be tested regularly and a “hush” button so that you can turn the alarm off.

You do need to be aware that while hard wired smoke alarms are incredibly effective and reliable, and they do require an electrician to install them.  It is not something that you can do yourself.

Battery Powered Smoke Alarms
A battery powered smoke alarm is also called a 9 volt smoke alarm.The battery is solely responsible for providing power to the alarm so you don’t have to worry about what happens if the power goes out.   Battery powered smoke alarms are very easy to install and do not require an electrician to install them, just place them in the required places (such as outside bedrooms, in the hallway, etc).
Battery powered smoke alarms do last a long time and they are reliable but all alarms should be tested regularly & also come with a test button for this purpose and many are also additionally fitted with a low battery indicator to take the guesswork out of when the batteries need to be changed.  Most of these types of alarms also come with a battery missing indicator, to remind you to replace the battery.

Electromagnetic induction and RFI

In previous part of this technical article, I wrote about electrical noise occurs or is transmitted into a signal cable system in the following four ways:

Galvanic (direct electrical contact) – part 1
Electrostatic coupling – part 1
Electromagnetic induction
Radio frequency interference (RFI)

3. Magnetic or inductive coupling

This depends on the rate of change of the noise current and the mutual inductance between the noise system and the signal wires.

Expressed slightly differently, the degree of noise induced by magnetic coupling will depend on the:

Magnitude of the noise current
Frequency of the noise current
Area enclosed by the signal wires (through which the noise current magnetic flux cuts)
Inverse of the distance from the disturbing noise source to the signal wires.

http://electrical-engineering-portal.com/4-ways-in-which-noise-can-enter-a-signal-cable-and-its-control-part-2