From the monthly archives: December 2011

We are pleased to present below all posts archived in 'December 2011'. If you still can't find what you are looking for, try using the search box.

Understanding LV Circuit Breaker Fault Ratings

By Steven McFadyen on 12/18/2011 12:20 PM

I think this post is going to be helpful to several of our readers. While the IEC low voltage circuit breaker Standard [IEC 60947-2, Low voltage switchgear and controlgear - Part 2: Circuit-breakers] ha... read more..


Understanding Motor Duty Rating

By Steven McFadyen on 12/12/2011 8:05 AM

One of the comments on my Motor Starting Series was asking for something on duty cycles. Here it is.

As a... read more..


8 Motor parts and common faults

By Steven McFadyen on 12/6/2011 6:07 AM

Straight forward list of some common motor faults.  If I have missed any other common faults, please take a bit of time to add them in as a comment below. read more..


myElectrical - Cable Sizing Tool Upgrade

By Steven McFadyen on 12/2/2011 4:56 AM

Our IEE cable sizing was wrote a few years ago and had become rough around the edges. I thought it was time to give the tool a service. Unfortunately when I looked under the hood I found cracked cylinde... read more..




How to Write an Electrical Note

Electrical notes are a collaborative collection of electrical engineering information and educational material. Any registered user can add content. ...

Smarter Electrical Distribution

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...

What does N+1 mean?

The term 'N+1' relates to redundancy and simply means that if you required 'N' items of equipment for something to work, you would have one additional...

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...

Lightning Protection and Earth Electrode Resistance

Most installations involve some form of lightning protection system which is connected to an earth electrode.  The function of the earth electrode is to...

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...

HTML Symbol Entities

HTML supports a variety of entity symbols which can be entered using either numbers or an entity name.  The number or name is preceded by the ‘&’ sign...

Back to basics - the Watt (or kW)

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...

Cables for MV Power Distribution - Earthed versus Unearthed Systems

Power cables can basically be classified into earthed and unearthed cables, where earthed and unearthed refer to the application for which the cable is...

Differential protection, the good old days

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...

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