Electrical Industry Articles and Stories

If you're a J.R.R. Tolkien fan, you recognized that headline reference. Or if you're a movie buff and watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy, you're familiar with the little jar of liquid that lit up when you talked to it.

But in any case, if you're an electrician, you've been in dark places because of power outages or new construction.

I've been in my share of them, for sure.

As a small business owner, I’ve come to count on a number of software packages to track my workload and manage my finances. I use different packages for overseeing my personal finances, keeping a calendar, tracking invoices and the once-a-year joy of preparing my annual income taxes. I spend a lot of time transferring data from one of these programs to another, mostly by hand.

When dealing with low, medium, or high AC voltages (or DC voltages for that matter), removing power from the circuit is crucial for any maintenance, servicing, or installation operation.

Most of the disconnects I've dealt with through the years have been fused and non-fused safety switches, switchgear disconnects, and disconnects mounted on starter buckets. Of course, circuit breakers are also a form of disconnect, but not normally designated as such.

Online shopping has certainly experienced a boom over the last six months, as many of us have felt less comfortable in physical stores. While electronic transactions might seem like a direct communication with retailers like Amazon or delivery services that work with your local supermarket, they’re actually pretty complicated transactions.

According to the National Fire Protection Association’s most recent numbers, up to 8 percent of all fire calls are the result of a false alarm. In 2018, that statistic translated into 2.8 million false alarm responses. Such events are both dangerous and expensive, and they are often caused by equipment failure rather than deliberate vandalism. Today’s addressable sensors and other initiating devices include self-monitoring capabilities that can help reduce false alarms and the aggravation and expense that go along with them.

In another article, we discussed some simpler methods of pulling interior wiring into conduit. We looked at coil packs and drum feed methods.

But when it comes to underground feeders and cabling, the struggle gets, well, "reel." When laying in conductors with underground or in-concrete installations, it's normally a two-step process, requiring a team at least three workers.