Amidst waves crashing against the rocks, on a hill overlooking the sea, stands a lighthouse, its light guiding every passing ship. At a resort right next to it, lighting professionals from all over the country came together recently to share their knowledge on the latest developments in the field of illumination. It was the […]
Does technology drive people’s behaviour or does behaviour influence technology, specifically rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) systems? I ask this question because of the rapid development of the sector from one extreme to the other and because of a spiral towards what is perhaps the final optimum solution. Rooftop PV, which started out as a […]
I’m an energy manager and an energy measurement and verification professional, and have been involved in the energy field for more than 25 years. I am therefore very conscious of the need to be energy efficient, to limit the impact on the environment and everything related to energy. I am, however, not an expert […]
According to the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI 2011), the first industrial revolution occurred during the 18th century when the first mechanical production machines driven by water and steam were developed. This set the world on an unabated growth path that never stopped accelerating. The second industrial revolution, around 1870, was characterised […]
Business must currently contend with challenges such as the downward growth trend in the Orient, the falling rand-dollar exchange rate and the very real possibility of a rating agency downgrade to junk status for South Africa. Added to these are the depressed state of the emerging-world economy and the recent approval by the National […]
The ECA(SA) National Executive Committee (NEC) held a strategic planning conference in early 2015 where it was agreed unanimously that the association’s corporate strategy would be to establish it as the national and international leader of electrical contractors based in South Africa and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries. As the NEC, we agreed […]
Association of Municipal Electricity Users (AMEU) strategic advisor Peter Fowles recently issued a warning to municipalities against signing Letters of Intent or similar documents with private companies offering solar water heater (SWH) installations at no cost. He said these offers are made in anticipation of Department of Energy (DoE) funding, but that there is […]
Resilient power systems are usually taken to mean grid power systems that can survive natural disasters and provide power to critical sites under extreme conditions. This requirement emerged in the USA after Hurricane Katrina and is now being legislated into many states. In South Africa, we are not subject to such devastating natural disasters […]
The technological world has changed significantly over the past century from a mainly mechanical-driven one to an electrically controlled one. The past century saw the development of the transistor in the 1940s and the arrival of the first functionally integrated circuit in 1960, a mere 55 years ago. The very first microprocessor was commercially […]
Many would like to believe that renewable energy is the only solution to the energy crisis and climate change. While renewables can obviously contribute substantially, would their potential contribution be greater than that of energy efficiency? Research commissioned by the International Energy Agency (IEA) a few years ago found that the impact of energy […]
