Electrical Industry Articles and Stories

Three years ago, I decided to finally bring my home into the modern age, in terms of its electrical distribution system. Gone was the 50-plus-year-old, 60-amp fuse box (yes, I said “fuse box”), along with the similarly low-capacity line from the pole to the house. In their place, a new 200-amp service line and breaker panel.

Designing industrial facilities is rarely a paint-by-numbers effort because each plant faces unique considerations, based on what it’s producing and the resulting safety and power requirements. That means power distribution equipment also needs to be custom designed.

In the food processing plant where I cut my electrical teeth, there were ceiling drops for sticker guns to label bagged product. Some of the workers complained about getting shocked off the stainless still bins that held the product. Adding inline GFCIs helped (although some still complained, even when no voltage was present).

Energy efficiency isn’t just a buzzword. It's a necessity for businesses looking to reduce costs, enhance operational efficiency, and contribute to environmental sustainability.

It’s not unusual that solar photovoltaic (PV) systems would require fuses – after all, these installations can carry substantial electrical loads, so overcurrent protection is critical to their safe operation. What is remarkable, though, are the conditions under which PV panels, their conductors, and their wiring can operate.

The Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) uses 24VDC input/output to provide 35W of power and 5 to 15 minutes Hold Time and is designed for critical networking and control applications such as industrial managed switches and human machine interfaces (HMI’s). The Industrial UPS uses Ultracapacitors instead of batteries, eliminating the #1 cause of conventional UPS failures, which lowers the risk of downtime - and there’s no need for costly and time consuming maintenance.