Issue 162 July - August 2024Please note: The issue content below is just a summary of the articles in the printed magazine.
The articles are not available on-line.
Please refer to the printed magazine for the complete article.
COVER STORY
Going underground safely with Hiko Power Engineering
After 86 years supplying the electricity industry with electrical equipment, components and tools, Hiko Power Engineering has become a specialist product development partner for network owners and their contractors.
Working with engineers in electricity distribution businesses and teams in the field, Hiko Power’s product development team solves routine and complex problems that arise for network operators on a daily basis, says the company’s design and production manager, John Spence.
These solutions are verified during design through testing which includes testing temperature rise under New Zealand conditions.
“This guarantees, for example, that Hiko LV frames can withstand short circuit currents and are capable of running for eight hours as a minimum at maximum load.”
Customising LV frames for the unique requirements of network operators has now become a core Hiko Power service.
“We catalogue all the designs of custom and volume products so that future orders are built and factory-tested to the exact same specification and in accordance with over 400 production work instructions.”
The team maintains a comprehensive library of all customer specifications and product requirements, technical and testing reports, and is always looking at ways to improve product safety, longevity, ease of installation and maintenance for assets such as underground pillars, underground distribution boxes and LV transformer frames.
Spence says this drive to improve product performance for its network customers is matched by Hiko Power’s commitment to the highest standards for its own performance. Hiko Power’s integrated management system was recently accredited by Telarc to ISO 9001 Quality management systems, ISO 14001 Environmental management systems and ISO 45001 Occupational health and safety management systems.
“Distribution network operators and private network owners can be confident in our quality, health and safety, and sustainability commitments as a supply partner.”
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NEWS
Certification: friend or foe?
One of the most unexpected outcomes of the recent prosecution of a Nelson electrician was the way certification was mistreated by the judge, the WorkSafe prosecutor and the electrician. It has been 11 years since function of a CoC was changed by the introduction of the ESC, and government officials and officers of the court have yet to grasp the legal significance of those changes.
But they appear not to be alone in that, if reports from inspectors are any indication.
Problems with certification began when electrical contractors were required to take full responsibility for their work in 1992. Certifying the compliance and safety of their work under an electrician’s licence became the quid pro quo for the monopoly they were given on prescribed electrical work. It was set up as the new paper trail that would allow the installation sector to operate more independently of the electricity network owners.
Prior to 1992, electricians could not carry out most prescribed electrical work without getting a permit for each job from their local power authority. Electrical inspectors were employed exclusively by these authorities, and they were the arbiters of the electrical safety and compliance regimes.
The new Electricity Act changed all that and replaced the permit system with self-certification carried out by electricians. Instead of seeking pre-work permission, they were required to certify their work on certificates of compliance (CoCs) upon completion.
The fact that these certificates were not called ‘certificates of electrical safety’, (the purpose of compliance), shows how Parliament at the time was more concerned with tracing electricians’ prescribed electrical work (PEW) for the purposes of liability, rather than ensuring a safe result.
That began to change in 2010 when new regulations were driven by fresh thinking were developed. The compliance and safety priorities were rebalanced in 2013 with the implementation of the electrical safety certificate (ESC).
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The impossible was highly probable
Many issues have arisen from the prosecution of a Nelson electrician over the death of a following tradesman who was building a surround for a rangehood installed by the electrician.
The May issue of ElectroLink addressed shortcomings in how electrical law was applied in this case. Electrical inspector, Allister McGregor, now provides a technical analysis of what occurred and advice on testing to prevent further fatalities under similar circumstances.
In 2020 an electrician removed a permanently wired fan/light unit and installed a socket outlet to supply a new rangehood. Two weeks later a builder was electrocuted while working on the surround to the new, plugged-in rangehood.
Based on what little information has been released by the judge, this technical appraisal offers the diagram in Figure 1 showing the situation the electrician understood he had left.
Before describing the tests prescribed in the standards, and the tests claimed to have been conducted by the electrician, are you comfortable there is no identifiable error so far?
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Endorsement competence failure
Attempts by the EWRB to raise competencies in certain areas appear to be off target and poorly implemented. Inspector Tony Doyle comments.
The regulatory governance of the electrical industry is in disarray, and it's only getting worse. The Electricity Act, Regulations and standards cited for compliance are out of date and, ten months ago, the EWRB issued a Gazette notice with potential catastrophic consequences. This notice will prohibit the certification, installation, inspection or connection of high-risk work by electrical inspectors in hazardous areas, cardiac protected areas and mains-parallel installations after 1 September 2024 unless inspectors are authorised by the EWRB via a new endorsed licence.
The short notice and the restrictive administrative requirements for obtaining these endorsements suggest there will be impending shortage of qualified electrical inspectors with the required endorsement to continue working in these critical areas.
What makes the matter worse is that there is no competency assessment for those meeting the eligibility requirements; some might say they are getting their licence out of a ‘Weet-Bix box’. Meanwhile, those who are ineligible have no training pathway or opportunity to obtain the endorsement before the September 1 cutoff. This absurd approach permits workers that have not been assessed for any particular competency to obtain the endorsement, while arbitrary administrative criteria exclude other experienced individuals.
Adding to the absurdity, the EWRB Gazette notice will gradually introduce niche registration classes starting in September, eventually expanding to 41 categories. This attempt to mitigate risk by increasing endorsements is a classic administrative blunder. The risk does not stem from the complexity of the work, so much so that it requires 41 registration categories of electrical worker. Instead, it arises because the guidance on the rules and testing is not fit for purpose. Clear, well-trained and understood minimum competency requirements for installation, testing and certification would eliminate the risk and the need for these excessive endorsements.
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Open letter to EWRB
The inspectors’ group, Electrical Safety New Zealand, sent an open letter to the EWRB on the 2024 changes to electrical licensing in June as follows:
The Registrar,
Electrical Workers Registration Board
Sir,
Electrical Safety New Zealand is a national organisation which has represented the interests of electrical inspectors since being established in 1993.
We believe that the days of licenced electrical workers being authorised to undertake electrical work in all areas of the industry should be over. The trade is now so complex that no practitioner can be fully competent in all areas – even with the added layer of safety provided by requiring third-party inspection of work that is classified as high risk. This added layer of safety is itself dependent on the inspector being competent – and the same argument applies, that no Inspector can be fully competent in all areas of ‘high-risk’ work. Accordingly, we applaud the concept of licence endorsements as a means of ensuring that only suitably competent persons undertake specialist electrical work.
However, that objective cannot be achieved unless the system of licensing endorsements is carefully designed and properly implemented. Unfortunately, the system established by EWRB’s Gazette notices is not well designed and has been implemented in entirely the wrong way.
If implemented in accordance with the Gazette notice, the system certainly will not have the desired effect. Instead, it is likely to result in utter chaos.
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COVER STORY
What is ‘TSN’ and do we really need it?
ever short of fresh ideas or new products that can purportedly improve what we do. Each seems to make a new set of promises about what benefits it can deliver, although the marketing surrounding some products can make it hard to discern their genuine value.
While new concepts and innovations are always welcome, each does need to be carefully evaluated against current practices and compared to existing systems before considering adoption. This is particularly so in industrial networking.
What is ‘TSN’?
Ethernet, the prevailing technology for IT environments, has similarly been almost universally adopted by those in OT. This is mainly due to its high capacity, fast transmission rate and low cost of implementation. Its well-established protocol stacks and sophisticated routing also offer weighty advantages.
However, the original designers of Ethernet were not concerned about timing constraints. Raw Ethernet (as standardised in IEEE 802.1) is really only concerned about delivering data packets reliably around a network and without errors. It has no facilities to handle latency and no concept of time. This is why it cannot provide facilities such as precise timing or synchronisation.
‘Real time’ communications (i.e. the ability to send data from one node to another within a specified time period) is however a ‘must have’ for industrial automation. We need this because processes often need to be synchronised within tight timing constraints. This explains why each industrial fieldbus, where timing is crucial, has had to modify standard Ethernet to some degree.
TSN stands for time sensitive networking. It seeks to address the timing limitations of standard Ethernet and thereby make it ‘deterministic’ (i.e. make it suitable for transmitting mission critical data within specified time frames).
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COVER STORY
Smart street lighting
Electric street lighting has long been an integral part of our outdoor landscape following its introduction to New Zealand in 1888. There are few New Zealanders that experience life without its influence, especially with our demographic becoming more urban based than ever before.
As technology changes, it is important for what we would now define as critical infrastructure to move with the times. In the previous decades, the progression of streetlighting away from traditional light sources such as metal halide or sodium lamps, towards energy efficient LED integrated lighting solutions has predominated the budgetary allowance for the uptake of technology-based solutions. As we move forward into an age of AI dominated progression, what has been an incremental move towards smart streetlighting solutions may suddenly become the new drive for our future lighting rollouts.
Smart streetlighting is a term that encapsulates a vast range of concepts that can now be applied to our lighting landscape. No longer are streetlights a simple arrangement of luminaires designed to provide illumination where required, but they are also an incidental form for delivering other services, as well as collecting information and even disseminating alerts or supplying power. The quantum shift to smart streetlighting has two distinct but intertwined functions, that of the lighting itself being smart through an uptake of control functionality as well as being a key delivery infrastructure for other smart technologies.
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Making sense of sensors
Sensors have commonly been used in lighting since the 1980’s. The early light sensors were passive infrared sensors (PIR) and predominantly used for exterior security lighting. Since then, motion detectors have been through a range of transitions with different technologies, increasing interconnectivity and levels of intelligence. The change to LED technology as well as the increase in digital lighting and smart controls has allowed for sensor technology to have an unprecedented opportunity for interoperability with our lighting systems.
The original lighting sensor types commonly found were PIR, ultrasonic, microwave and combinations known as dual tech. These sensors still form the bulk of the market today, and each has their place and set of best uses. The ubiquitous PIR can still be found in many domestic and commercial installations, often they are now integrated into the luminaire. They use infrared sensors to detect heat, commonly using differential detection by measuring multiple points and any change in infrared emissions between those points are used to indicate movement. They are called passive, as they do not emit any form of signal, but rather analyse the incoming infrared radiation from the environment. They are therefore energy efficient, cheap to produce and easy to integrate into lighting systems.
They do have drawbacks, such as limited range and sensitivity, as well as being susceptible to environmental factors such as temperature change and physical obstructions. As any user of an exterior sensor light will be able to attest, they are susceptible to false positives, which lead to most users learning to ignore their sensor light triggering, often self-defeating the purpose of them being installed as a security measure.
Some of the other fallibilities, such as limited detection angles, a relatively slow response time compared to other sensor types, and a requirement for both a constant power source and maintenance to keep dirt and obstructions from the sensors have made them a target for sourcing better sensor options. However, they are still the most-found sensor type on the market and have proved surprisingly resilient against market competition because of their cost-effectiveness and simplicity.
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