At first glance, the environmental consequences of meeting such massive demands seem horrendous – especially if all the new generating capacity is based on fossil fuels, adding to greenhouse gas emissions and contributing to global warming and climate change.

But Africa has significant alternatives: extensive river systems offer big opportunities for hydro electric power. More promising still is the largely untapped potential of the sun. Photovoltaic (PV) systems already operate in some places, notably South Africa. The “Rainbow Nation” has an ambitious government program for renewables to help meet its bold target of adding 52GW of new generating capacity in the next 20 years. As it stands now, nearly 90 percent of South Africa’s electricity comes from readily available coal, which spews out greenhouse gases; nuclear accounts for just 5 to 10 percent, while renewables amount to a mere 1 percent.

But the scene is changing fast, thanks to massive new investment. Last December, for example, ABB won contracts worth $225m to boost renewables targets with two big turnkey PV plants in northern Limpopo province. The two sites will be among the first large units built in the opening phase of the government’s long term renewable energy program.

This month, ABB went a step further with the decision to start production in South Africa of solar inverters,  the “heart and brain” of the every PV system.

ABB is betting big on inverters, and PV in general. Last month, ABB announced plans to spend just over $1bn to buy the U.S. based Power-One, the world’s second biggest solar inverter maker.

Starting local production in South Africa of inverters of up to 1,000KW from next year is a sign of ABB’s commitment to solar, and we anticipate significant potential both locally and from neighboring African countries. South Africa will become the fourth production site for inverters after Estonia, India and China, and reinforce its position as a springboard for ambitions to gain an ever bigger piece of the African action.

The region’s energy needs are set to grow with economic expansion, and South Africa is looking to benefit from its abundance of sunshine.

Well then, it’s time to let the sun shine in …..

What’s even more amazing is that we at the generator circuit-breaker (GCB) factory  have taken advantage of new media technology to get our customers to see their factory acceptance test (FAT) remotely. With only an internet connection, GCB customers can witness the testing of their GCB in our award-winning factory in Zurich without actually leaving their office premises using our unique Remote Factory Acceptance Test (RFAT). It is a tool that enables us to invite our customers virtually into the factory and provide them a customer event that is as close as possible to the real thing.

The RFAT saves both time and money. Overcoming geographical limitations and is not restricted in terms of number of attendees which means that customers anywhere can involve as many relevant people and expand the test audience. It makes it possible for them to experience the event with their project manager as if they were in the factory.

The RFAT tool was introduced in 2010 and currently nearly one fourth of all final acceptance tests are held remotely using this tool and we see this trend on the rise.

Multiple cameras provide accurate video streaming directly from the test area to the screen of the customer where those interested in the test can browse through the different views. The friendly test engineers are natural performers (who have got used to the spotlight) and can guide the customers through the whole test through their headsets.

At the beginning of the test, the project manager welcomes the customer with the test engineers down on the factory floor, holding a special personalized signboard to simulate arrival at an airport!  All this helps create as much of a real-life scenario around  the RFAT as possible sitting in front of a computer somewhere around the world.

The RFAT has become well accepted and liked  tool helping us to serve our customers even better while saving time and resources. Shortcoming and regret if any is that we can’t share Swiss chocolate with them on the successful completion of the tests! 

The accident occurred a day after publication of an investigation report from the US Chemical Safety Board on the Chevron Richmond Refinery fire in August 2012, showing that a high temperature carbon steel pipe had ruptured due to ‘sulfidation’ corrosion. The CSB report highlights that this failure mechanism is well know in the refining industry, and points to a failure to learn from previous incidents and install ‘inherently safer’ piping materials on this duty that would have avoided this type of corrosion. The report also highlights failures of the Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) revalidation team to identify the hazard and take remedial action, due to a lack of competence in metallurgy.

It would be tempting to conclude that the Waco accident was unforeseeable and that a number of unfortunate factors had conspired to cause the explosion. These types of events are thankfully rare, but companies handing ammonium nitrate should be aware of similar explosions, including one at a fertiliser plant in Toulouse France in September 2001. This event was thought to have involved a 300 tonne store of contaminated ‘reject’ material, that exploded killing 29, injuring around 2,500, and shattering windows up to 5 km away. In another accident described as the ‘worst industrial accident in US history’, a ship being loaded with 2,300 tonnes of Ammonium Nitrate in the Port of Texas caught fire and exploded, killing around 576 people and flattening 1,000 buildings.

Although it is too early to speculate on the causes of the Waco explosion, a common finding on similar accidents is a failure to carry out adequate PHA, a key aspect of an effective Process Safety Management system. The essential aspects of PHA are to identify credible hazards based on the properties of the substances being processed, select suitable control measures to reduce risks to a tolerable level, and then manage these control measures to achieve reliability throughout the lifetime of the facility. The UK Health and Safety Executive publishes a code of practice for the safe storage and handling of Ammonium Nitrate, reference INDG 230, and readily available on its’ website. This classifies AN as an explosive that can detonate when heated, with the risk increased if the material is contaminated. Its gives a number of requirements for safe storage, including locating AN either outdoors or within buildings that ‘will not burn’, and limiting the size of storage stacks to control the scale of an explosion.

Companies operating ‘major accident hazard’ facilities should critically review the competence of the teams carrying out PHA’s, where they are using established techniques such HAZID and HAZOP. These studies can appear fairly mechanistic in nature and can place a great demand on scarce skilled and experienced resources. A serious management shortcoming is to assume that less experienced teams will be capable of producing adequate results and conclusions. The team leader has a critical role and needs to be highly competent in all aspects of process safety, and capable of steering the team based on an in-depth understanding of the causes of rare ‘process industry incidents’. If the process industry is to achieve a step change improvement and avoid the human toll and negative image from accidents such as the explosion at Waco, it needs to take on board the adage “Wise men learn by other men’s mistakes, fools by their own”.

Image credit: The Bay Area News via flickr

Arc flashes are a serious concern in the electrical industry.  They result from a fault in an electrical system where a high voltage shorts rapidly to ground.  The resulting arc plasma can exceed temperatures of 35,000 °F and the energy released can vaporize copper conductors, melt steel barriers, and create an explosion as the plasma expands outwards with extreme force.  Workers and operators in the vicinity of these arc faults are exposed to explosive, high temperature forces which can lead to serious injury or death.

The Event

ABB had assisted in the upgrade a line-up of 13.8kV metal clad switchgear at a major university in the Northeast United States.  The existing gear was installed in 1987 and was an outdoor design with a common aisle between two rows of switchgear and enclosed in a NEMA 3R enclosure.  An ABB REA Arc Protection System had been added as part of the upgrade, three months before the event occurred.  On the day of the event, six people were inside the enclosure, touring the completed project, when an arc fault occurred in one of the switchgear line-ups.

The Result

An arc fault of this magnitude would normally have severely damaged the switchgear line-up and caused injury or death of the people inside the enclosure.  Instead, the REA relay system did exactly what it was designed to do and cleared the fault by opening the source breaker in 50.2 milliseconds.  The arc light and fault current were sensed by the REA system in less than 2.5 milliseconds and the breaker opened in 48 milliseconds.  Instead of severely damaging the gear, the REA system minimized the impact to the equipment to where it could be fully restored in less than 12 hours.  More importantly, all six people walked out alive and uninjured.

The Bottom Line

It’s easy to understand why this story made such an impact on me.  Upgrading an existing line-up of switchgear by adding the REA Arc Protection System can have huge benefits.  Equipment damage can be minimized, power restoration can occur quicker, and lives may even be saved with this technology.   Even though I wasn’t there to witness the event in 2010, I’m also now a true believer in the benefits of the solution.

There is an even more serious side to this; while working in South Africa a man was killed when hit by lightening.  The prevailing mood was one of “we couldn’t have avoided that, that was a ‘pure accident’” to which I replied “of course it was preventable as all accidents are!”  My reasoning was that the seasons in South Africa are hugely predictable, often down to the hour of the day when these electric storms occur, and a “tool box talk” about the dangers of climbing reactors stacks in this kind of weather may well have prevented this death.

How do you use tool box talks in your environment?  In our own small team we have a weekly telephone conference and this is an ideal opportunity for us to give each other tool box talks.  It doesn’t have to be just “top down” but anyone can share a story or give a reminder on any subject; safety, business or otherwise.

Victor Volt, former classmate, sits opposite. Unlike Gekko, Volt went into engineering, not finance. Once envious of his glamorous banking counterpart, Volt now glows, knowing the tables have been turned. Finance has fallen into disrepute, while science has become the undisputed highway to wealth and social status. Volt’s smile is, er … electric.

A fantasy? Perhaps. But some engineers’ daydreams about role reversal may not be quite so wide of the mark. That finance doesn’t carry its former cachet is undeniable after five years of crises. Hedge fund managers’ legendary fees are being disputed, as performance has palled. Even more mainstream bankers are confronted with critical questions about the value of much of what they do.

By the same token, science – and engineering in particular – may be poised for a revival. Hard figures are thin on the ground. But circumstantial evidence suggests interest in finance as a career is falling at many top business schools. While jobs are going fast in finance, there is vast and rising worldwide demand for engineers.

Recruiters at most leading engineering groups bemoan a “skills shortage” as they strive to fill vacancies. Many have turned to unconventional remedies to meet their needs. Big western groups have cast their nets ever wider, often establishing big and growing research and development centres in fast industrialising countries, like India and China, and encouraging immigration via sponsored visa entry programmes to meet shortages at home.

Economics suggests bigger financial inducements could also boost supply – though it may be a while yet before engineers start earning Gekko-style salaries.

But might interest and enrolment also be stimulated by less material inducements?

In electrical engineering, the world is desperately seeking solutions to an unrivaled range of issues. With the Earth’s population rising inexorably towards 9bn, the demand for power will surge dramatically. How can fast industrializing countries, like China or Brazil, meet their legitimate ambitions for higher standards of living without spewing out more pollution?  How can “clean” power sources, like wind and the sun, be harnessed effectively to meet rising electricity needs? And how can current industrial processes, whether in steel mills, paper plants or car factories, be streamlined and upgraded to consume less energy?

The names of the ground breaking entrepreneurs and researchers, like Bell, Edison or Tesla, have gone down in history for their seminal work in bringing power and communications into the home and workplace, transforming lifestyles. But, in electricity generation and distribution, the decades after their innovations were characterized more by building on and refining those early breakthroughs than by further such stunning discoveries. The way power is distributed today, for example, does not differ that radically from the work pioneered by Edison at the dawn of “the electric age.”

Now, however, the world is facing a new set of hurdles, with the massive challenges of population growth, resource shortage and pollution facing the engineers of the future.

Currently, there are not enough of them. Encouragingly, though, their numbers may gradually be rising as developing countries devote more efforts to teaching and training and, in many locations, more women enter what was once a male domain.

But status and social standing also play a part. Popular understanding about pollution, the impact of greenhouse gases and the implications of climate change have arguably already boosted the status of science. Appreciation for the potential of new solutions, like renewable energy, has also risen. And those sceptics who suggested the days of towering technological discovery were over may also have to eat their words: late last year, for example, ABB, the Swiss electrical engineering group, overcame a decades old obstacle in the physics of electrical power by developing the first high voltage direct current circuit breaker – a discovery since accorded widespread recognition in the scientific community and promising a transformation in how electricity is transmitted.

It may be a while before Victor Volt beats Gordon Gekko in the bragging rights. But a realignment in the attraction and prestige of careers may no longer be quite such a pipedream.

*This post was published on behalf of a freelance blogger

As MLPs, they can raise money on public stock exchanges, allowing investors to take direct stakes in energy projects, but crucially they do not have to pay corporation tax like other publicly traded companies. In 2012, MLPs raised over $23 billion of new capital, most of which is thought to be for oil and shale gas projects.

As relative newcomers to the energy sector, renewables do not qualify for MLP status. This puts them out of reach of smaller investors, meaning that have to rely on larger, institutional investors, who tend to demand higher rates of return, which can be prohibitive in nascent industries.

The winds of change are blowing, however. In 2008, under huge public pressure to reduce gasoline prices, Congress amended the tax code to allow MLPs to invest in alternative transport fuels such as ethanol. Now, a bi-partisan group of senators, backed by myriad businesses, trade associations, clean energy organizations and even some producers of fossil fuels, has prepared a bill to put to Congress, calling for MLP status to be extended to renewables.

The hope is that, with MLP status, renewable energy projects could significantly reduce their financing costs, bringing down the price of renewable electricity, and reducing their reliance on subsidies.

Clean-energy organizations have long argued that it is fossil fuels and not renewables that have been the real beneficiaries of government largesse. They say tax breaks and subsidies for solar and wind energy pale in comparison with the advantages conferred by MLPs, which have helped to build much of America’s modern oil and gas infrastructure and are now fueling the shale revolution.

Wherever one stands in this debate, a level playing field for renewables is surely something that doesn’t need to be justified.

If you are like me, the impulse to play is particularly strong when you see the product you’ve helped to launch on the shelves at the local store, or when the sports car you had to have is suddenly being driven by every third person on the road.

This week’s release of Iron Man 3, the superhero film featuring one of the most popular Avengers, produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, is one of those times. It has me geared up for a game of I Spy.

What will I be looking to spy with my little eye? ABB’s multipurpose industrial robot the IRB 120. The robot makes a cameo appearance somewhere at the end of the film. Iron Man 3 is not the first time that an ABB robot has appeared in a major motion picture or even been used by the entertainment industry. ABB’s robots have been featured in the sci-fi action thriller Terminator Salvation, appeared in a Chemical Brothers’ music video and even gone on tour with Bon Jovi.

When it isn’t preparing for the a walk down the red carpet, the IRB 120, which weighs in at a slender 25 kg, is the smallest multipurpose industrial robot ever designed. Its six-axes can handle a payload of up to 3kg (4kg with its wrist down) and with a reach of 580 mm, it is able to carry out a series of operations using flexible rather than hard automated solutions. And, as the name implies, industrial robots like the IRB 120 typically are used for welding, painting, assembly, picking, packing, palletizing and product inspection applications.

According to a 2012 report by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), the demand for industrial robots will grow at a rate of about 5% percent annually. The electrical/electronics manufacturing sector is expected to increase its use of these kinds of robots significantly between 2013 and 2015. Good news for ABB whose IRB 120–and other products–is already a favorite of the electronic, food and beverage, machinery, solar, pharmaceutical, medical and research sectors.

So, if the IFR is correct, I am going to be the Robotics “I Spy World Champion” in no time. In the meantime, you can see the IRB 120 in action packing small tubes of beauty products for L’Oreal Canada below.

With Gas Insulated Switchgear (GIS) technology, key components including contacts and conductors are protected with insulating gas. Compactness, reliability and robustness make this a preferred solution where space is a constraint or in harsh environmental conditions.

Whether it is bustling metropolises like India’s capital New Delhi with 14 million people constantly on the move or megacity hubs like Frankfurt,  housing around 260 financial institutions and welcoming more than 320,000 commuters to the city – it is a challenge to energize these cities. And with rapid urbanization, an even bigger dilemma is to figure out where to locate the power infrastructure required to feed them -  especially since, like in all other major metros, space is a luxury. With the ability to reduce substations from the size of a football pitch to a tennis court and the capability to be housed underground, GIS technology can enable substations to hide in the city (watch movie).

ABB pioneered high-voltage GIS in the mid-1960s and with a global market leading installed base of more than 20,000 bays ABB continues to drive this technology to new frontiers. One of the recent innovations include the new generation 420kV (kilovolt) GIS, which reduces product volume by up to 33 per cent compared to its predecessor resulting in a considerably smaller footprint, reducing the amount of SF6 insulating gas requirement by as much as 40 percent making it more environmentally friendly. It also helps to enhance resource efficiency by reducing thermal losses, lowering transportation costs and optimizing investment in infrastructure.

The new GIS can be factory assembled  and shipped as one bay in a container instead of multiple assembly units, saving site installation and commissioning time by up to 40 percent compared with traditional designs. The bays can be assembled in a day and moved on wheels to their final destination. And all this with uncompromising performance and reliability.

The introduction of the 420kV GIS follows the recent launch of advanced 245kV and 72.5kV versions. ABB has also developed 1,100 kV and 1,200 kV products to address emerging market needs for bulk power transmission over long distances at ultrahigh voltage levels to minimize losses.

And  when it comes to technology and innovation ABB remains committed to collaborating with customers and countries around the world, to meet their needs, address their challenges and leverage their opportunities.