Upfront in this June issue of Electricity + Control, Editorial Technical Director Professor Ian Jandrell emphasises the importance of science, technology, engineering and maths in education and shares his experience of being part of the Regeneron ISEF in Los Angeles this year.
We present more on the young South African scientists who participated in this international competition in our column on Reskilling, upskilling + training – and salute their achievements.
Industry 4.0 is taking form progressively across all industrial sectors. In our feature on Industry and IIoT in this issue, Wesley Vorster of ACTOM highlights its impact on the electro-mechanical sector, a sector that supplies equipment across industry broadly and which itself is being transformed to incorporate Industry 4.0 and IIoT technologies – in the equipment it produces as well as in its own production operations.
The drive to clean energy remains in focus globally as the world works towards achieving the commitments made in the Paris Agreement which have been supported by continuing consensus from the annual UNFCCC Conference of Parties meetings, most recently COP28 held in Dubai, UAE, in late 2023. It is widely agreed that Africa can and must play a key role in the transition. In this context, for our feature on Energy management + the industrial environment, Leigh Darroll spoke to Sabine Dall’Omo of Siemens Sub-Saharan Africa, about the primary practical steps that will enable the energy transition in Africa.
Also in this feature, Lance Dickerson of REVOV points out the value of battery energy storage as an essential element in South Africa’s drive towards increasing renewable energy generation, emphasising that without it, much of the investment in new renewable generation capacity is wasted.
In Measurement + instrumentation, Vepac Electronics shares an interesting piece about the use of Spectrum Instrumentation’s ADC cards in lightning research. The cards were chosen because they efficiently capture the huge amount of data within the seconds of a lightning flash as is needed to inform the research.
We also present various other monitoring and measurement devices that serve industry – from portable spectrometers, to flow assemblies for analytical measurement points in water and wastewater treatment processes, to flow switches for water, oils and gases, and multifunctional display units that provide immediate on-site visibility of various measured values.
As the ways in which we generate and use power change and we move towards an increasingly electrified world, the electricity grid that delivers that power also needs to change. This is the point made by Dr Ulrich Greiner of TE Connectivity in his article in our feature on Transformers, substations + cables. He highlights some of the technologies available to support a smarter, more transparent and resilient grid.
The ever-increasing volumes of data generated by our growing use of digital technologies in almost every aspect of our lives makes data centres one of the fastest growing sectors globally. And data centres demand power that is always on. David Claassen of Trafo Power Solutions outlines the benefits of using modular substations equipped with dry-type transformers for growing data centres.
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