Issue 166 March - April 2025

Please 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
Get future-ready at the New Zealand Electrical Conference

For the first time in six years Master Electricians is holding a national conference in Queenstown in October, but this year’s conference will be like none other. The focus is on leadership in the electrical industry and the conference has been opened to anyone and any organisation that wants to advance the industry and their role in it.

Master Electricians chief executive, Alexandra Vranyac-Wheeler, says as the country begins to find its feet again, Master Electricians is looking to provide leadership for the electrical industry and improve business opportunities for its members while increasing its advocacy for change at a government level.

The conference will address both objectives and further the work Vranyac-Wheeler has been doing to bring interest groups across the industry together and advance the electrification of New Zealand in a way that is beneficial to all. To achieve that, Master Electricians is inviting non-member electrical contractors, consultants, suppliers and power companies to attend so they can forge new relationships and better business.

She says initial interest is strong with 280 registrations of interest in the conference coming in to the national office within the first three days of announcing it to members.

“There is strong support for the concept of a New Zealand Electrical Conference where they could network with sponsors and learn about new technologies and products.”

She says the take-up of new technologies is an ongoing issue for many members and more effort needs to be made to increase the pace of technology adoption so that members can prosper from it.

Please refer to the printed magazine for the complete article
NEWS
Unsupervised apprentice fined $10,000

The full force of the legal system descended on a hapless electrical apprentice in December 2024 when he was convicted in the New Plymouth District Court. He was fined $10,000 for carrying out prescribed electrical work without a licence, cutting “through a live mains cable without being authorised” by the EWRB and “doing negligent work in a manner that was dangerous to life”.

This prosecution carried out by the Electrical Workers Registration Board (EWRB) brings home to apprentices the legal dangers they face if they ignore electrical law, disregard the EWRB’s requirement to work under supervision and fail to respond to a summons to appear in court.

The apprentice, Bradley Payne, was granted a trainee limited certificate by the EWRB in February 2021 and three years 10 months later failed to appear in court to answer three charges of breaching the Electricity Act. No breaches of the Electricity Regulations were alleged.

The trial proceeded in his absence as a formal proof hearing of a category one charge where the maximum penalty is limited to a fine adjudicated in a judge-alone trial.

The facts of the trial in this article are based on the sentencing notes of Judge A S Greig who confirmed that Bradley Payne was personally served with the initial disclosure pursuant to the Criminal Disclosure Act 2008 together with a summons which directed him to appear on 28 August.

Payne was personally served with further disclosure on 22 August. He did not appear at the first appearance in the New Plymouth District Court, but he did come to court later that day. The matter was stood down to 18 September and he was remanded at large.

Please refer to the printed magazine for the complete article
Electrical testing in 2025

Persistent testing failures have highlighted deficiencies in the compliance regime. Inspector Athol Gibson comments.

Electricity has been generated and used in New Zealand for at least 139 years. Today it is an essential commodity that today cannot be done without. There is an industry that has built up to maintain the use of power and install more electrical equipment to increase its usage. This is achieved safely by having tradespeople who are trained and assessed as competent to carryout electrical work. If any person or animal receives an unintended electrical shock or a fire is started by poor electrical installation work, then there is something seriously wrong.

As part of technical and safety training all electrical workers receive instruction in testing of electrical circuits and equipment to ensure they are safe to liven and therefore safe to use. There are many and vastly varied situations where testing is carried out. Sad to say, at times of training, there is simply not enough emphasis placed on the need for comprehensive testing of a completed circuit or installation as the case may be, despite the law mandating it.

The Electricity (Safety) Regulations require all new work to be tested before connecting it to a power supply to ensure that the electrical work is not only safe to liven but, once connected, it also is safe to use. There are also the situations of testing before re-livening of maintenance and/or repair work.

One serious shortfall in the electrical regulations is that even though the testing process is compulsory under AS/NZS 3000, it is not compulsory to record any of the actual test results on a CoC. The fact that the persons connecting the installation to a power supply have to satisfy themselves that the testing required by the regulations has been done before issuing an ESC is not enough to ensure safety when electricians are misusing a ‘tick in the box’ format for their CoCs and connecting their own work. And therein lies problem No. 1.

Please refer to the printed magazine for the complete article
COVER STORY
Preventing cyberattacks in industrial control systems

Cyber security remains one of, if not the biggest, challenge facing industry today. The threat of security breaches pervades every aspect of business, and most worrying is the exponential rise in cyberattacks being committed.

As we saw in the previous ElectroLink edition, ransomware is still the most common form of attack, as is the theft of intellectual property and sabotage of operations. While these sorts of attacks are most concerning, the damage is mainly limited to financial losses to individual businesses.

A far more serious form of attack is the deliberate, malicious physical destruction of property by adversaries. These have far-reaching, potentially catastrophic, material consequences for public safety. Examples include the disruption or disabling of utilities like internet services or electricity supply, water contamination and environmental damage. Such attacks are often perpetrated by ‘Hacktivists’ (a contraction between the words ‘hacker’ and ‘activists’) who wish to make a political statement.

Table 1 lists just a few of the more high-profile cases that have occurred over the last fifteen years or so; it is by no means a complete list. Given what’s at stake, this second part will look at practical ways of averting cyber infiltrations, which are especially useful in high consequence applications.

Please refer to the printed magazine for the complete article
COVER STORY
Track lighting tips

rack lighting was first invented and patented in 1961 and since then it has gone from strength to strength. It has been a predominant force in galleries, retail shops and anywhere needing high end display lighting since the eighties. As technology has improved, it has spread across the gamut of lighting installations due to its newfound capabilities at being both subtle and understated with hidden recessed tracks and miniaturised spotlights through to its ability to create a focal point in and of itself with intricate track designs and outlandish LED luminaire heads.

The track component of lighting can be broken down into several different aspects. The first is the division between single and three circuit tracks (or alternatively called single or three phase tracks). This distinction controls several areas, and it denotes as per its name how many phases are feeding the track. Single phase track will only be able to have a single switching mechanism across all installed luminaires, while three phase tracks can have three independently switched circuits.

Single phase track, due to its load restraints, can be smaller and more discreet than three circuit tracks, which are bulkier due to requiring physical separation between circuits, as well as making it more difficult for fingers to gain access to live conductors. As three phase tracks have three live feeds, it is also able to carry a larger electrical load and therefore have more fittings or carry increased numbers of higher wattage luminaires.

As well as carrying three phases, some tracks also may have another two conductors embedded to carry control signals such as DALI for dimming or meshing luminaires into a DALI network.

Please refer to the printed magazine for the complete article
Active and passive cooling for thermal management of LEDs

Casting the mind back to the early days of LED replacement lamps, there were significant issues around how those lamps coped with heat in the small form factor requirement driven by being a retrofit lamp. Not only were they compact, but they were often found within an enclosed light fitting like a downlight. Add to the space and size issues, the fact that halogen lamps had a relatively high lumen output forced the LED replacements to be running at the edge of their performance limits.

To ensure longevity in the face of these adverse conditions, these early-to-market products often had to resort to active cooling. This meant on the back of the heatsink within the halogen replacement lamp was a small fan unit to assist heat removal. Teething issues with these lamps were notorious, from total fan failures, which then made for very short lamp life, to fans that would have friction issues and start squealing at a headache-inducing squeal, through to houses that were so infested with downlights, that the reverberating acoustic hum when all the lights were on was enough to drive anyone back to wishing for candles.

Thankfully LED luminaires have come a long way since those early days and thermal management has come on in leaps and bounds. Retrofit applications are becoming less common, so LED lighting is not restricted by old form factors and are able to be designed in a fashion that suits their own peculiarities and requirements.

However, at the same time the expectations behind what luminaires are capable of and new applications that place exacting demands on them ensure that managing thermal issues is still a technological drive for innovation and optimisation.

Please refer to the printed magazine for the complete article
Back Issues Issue 165
January - February 2025
Issue 164
November - December 2024
Issue 163
September - October 2024
View all issues