"Wisdom begins in wonder" – Socrates
Tag: Electrical Engineering
The UK to Shutter Its Last Coal Plant by 2025
12/19/18
“Will Britain really be coal-free by 2025?”
Recently, the United Kingdom has announced that it will shutter its last coal plant by 2025 to combat climate change and air pollution. We at Isaac’s Science Blog welcome this move and are very happy to see the U.K move forward boldly in its climate plans.
Something to think about when you turn on the lights.
12/17/18
“What’s a really trippy fact about when you turn on the lights?”
When turning on the lights, it’s easy to think that the electricity just magically appears. But something much more complex is actually happening. Everytime you activate an electrical appliance, electrons need to be generated and sent directly to transmission. This means that all the electricity you receive is brand new! This only happens if there is no storage present on the gird however. Just something to think about when you turn on the lights.
Accelerometers
12/13/18
“How can we measure the acceleration of an object?”
Acceleration can be one of the most important things for an engineer to measure. But we will need a tool to accomplish this. This is how we can use accelerometers, which measure the stresses on piezoelectric material to determine acceleration.
Gyroscopes
12/12/18
“How can we measure angular velocity and distance traveled?”
When working with machines that undergo angular movement such as motors, it is very useful to know their rotational velocity. This can be accomplished with the use of Gyroscopes. The velocity of a gyroscope can be integrated to find the distance traveled.
Image credit Wikipedia
The European Union Has Just Unveiled It’s Zero Carbon Emission Plan
11/29/18
“How will the EU become carbon neutral?”
Breaking news. The European Union, accounting for 10 % of carbon emissions globally, has recently unveiled its long-term plan to cut its carbon emissions to zero by 2050. Although its 2030 goals will not be changed, it does give more focus to the following decades. This will be an extremely exciting event for years to come.
Switching regulators
11/28/18
“How can we control a series device to rapidly switch on and off?”
Series devices are used everywhere in electronics. However, sometimes we would like to be able to switch them on and off at an extremely high frequency. So how can we use our engineering mindset to solve this? Well, what if we were to have a special voltage regulator that could accomplish this? This is the exact idea behind a switching regulator and is integrated into all sorts of electrical devices.
How Battery Storage can help Black Starts
11/27/18
“How can battery storage help with black starts?”
In order to recover from power outages, black starts are a necessary firsts step. This can be helped with battery storage since their geographically distributed nature will make them more resilient. This is How Battery Storage can help Black Starts.
Black Start
11/20/18
“How can we recover an electric grid from a blackout?”
Blackouts can cause enormous devastation to communities. Although recovery can be a long process, If generators are used to create power for a portion of the system. This is known as a Black Start and is one of the many ways to increase grid resilience.
Rolling Blackouts
11/16/18
“Do utility services sometimes need to intentionally stop electricity services?”
Power grids can suffer blackouts when there is too much demand in comparison to supply. As a result, utilities might institute blackouts for certain periods of time to artificially cut desire. These are known as Rolling Blackouts and are commonly found in developing parts of the world.
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