Working from home

Before I started this consulting practice in 1993, I had, like many, worked at other businesses. In general, I started work at some time between 07:30 and 08:30, had a tea break and a lunch break... 

Oh ancient art

About 50 years ago, I was at the Department of Internal Affairs in Johannesburg. I had waited for about two hours to be processed so as to be issued with a South African identity document. I had... 

Moral responsibility

I wrote two pieces for this column in which I stated that, in my experience, the Department of the Environment, Forestry and Fisheries (DEFF) does not answer phone calls or reply to emails and that... 

An obscure profession

Some may know that I trade as an acoustics engineer, not a ‘sound engineer’. As I recently reminded an attorney – the ‘sound engineer’ chews gum, has piercings and tattoos, wears dark glasses at... 

Driving through the gap

Back in the day, consulting engineering firms were making money hand over fist. There were no black consulting engineers. Government handed out projects on a rota system. Fees were based on a... 

The carpetbaggers

New people on the block, hoping to make a quick buck, were once named carpetbaggers. The term originated from the carpet bags (a form of cheap luggage made from carpet fabric) which many of these... 

Shoot the poor

So there’s this film, see? A big mining company wants to dump mine tailings in a river. They’re keeping it all hush hush. But a brave and fearless person manages to find out their devious plan. The... 

Aw, Snap!

Wind turbines do not assist power system operation. They do not. Every so often, a power system collapses and it is the renewable-energy systems which cause the collapse. Wind turbines produce no... 

Refurbishing a crane

Large cranes have many moving parts and quite complex systems. In general, travelling cranes supplied over the past 30 years have a driver who sat high up in a cabin. In the cabin are the levers... 

Chattanooga Choo Choo

“Okay, children, I’ll tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was this place at the mouth of the Orange river, on the border of South Africa. At this place, there were diamonds on the ground,... 

Energy costs spiral dive

Professor Renfrew Christie wrote a book titled Electricity, Industry and Class in South Africa. This is a highly recommended book, especially for anybody interested in the, um, anthropology of... 

Cuban sanitation engineers

We try to stay away from politics in this column. But. Und zis iz a big ‘but’. 

Welcome to Earth

“Good morning and welcome to Earth. I know it’s been a long trip, but I am sure you are all excited to have finally arrived. I am going to answer some of your questions, some general and some about... 

A missed call from you

Back in the day, as they say, Harden Beck, of the East London municipality, was the chief electrical engineer. I found out that the electrical engineering department of the city received many... 

All in a day’s work

We were at Richards Bay Minerals, getting a safety briefing. The safety officer explained: “Hey, we’ve got 14 types of snake here. Of these, 12 types are venomous, which is to say, if you get... 

Turkish power delight

Gwede Mantashe is a South African politician who served as the national chairperson of the African National Congress (ANC). He is also a former chairperson of the South African Communist Party and... 

Free, free at last!

What is a fact is that many people think that being off the grid, independent from Eskom, is very much more desirable than being connected to the grid. What is also a fact is that many people do... 

I’d like world peace, please

It is a stock joke: every contestant in the Miss World contest is asked what she hopes for and the answer is, among other answers: “I’d like world peace . . .” It’s easy to mock. Sexism aside,... 

Working from home

A year ago, our President advised his fallow South Heficans that we would all have to stay at home for a bit. There are a lot of songs with the word ‘home’ in them. There’s Simon and Garfunkel’s... 

I’m sorry, I’ll read that again

The telephone system in this country is currently worse than it was during the time of farm telephone lines. You don’t know what a farm telephone line is? (Or don’t know what a telephone or,... 

A weapon to end all wars

Those of you who love karma or schadenfreude (as I do) probably have watched YouTube videos of Somali pirates being shot up by various warships. Schadenfreude is German and it’s made up of the... 

All in 38 years

In 1982, I was working for GEC Engineering Services, in Germiston. I reported to Pierre Ballot, who was an incredibly good engineer. My job was to test and commission electrical equipment that had... 

Something to make you laugh

I was on the witness stand as an expert witness. The applicant has submitted an affidavit that a power line conductor broke off and set the veld alight. He claims he has lost hectares of valuable... 

Great engineering failures

I don’t believe in climate change. I recently mentioned this to a young adult American woman (23 years old). She said, “Uh, huh”, but clearly thought I was wrong. I said to her, look, it’s like... 

Being paid to whistle

You may have seen Bianca Goodson (Smith) on TV or somewhere. She is the former Trillian CEO who testified how the company swindled Eskom and Transnet. As a result of her evidence at the Public... 

Power system dog maths

‘Dog Mathematics’ is mathematics you could teach a dog to do. The dog may not get it right, depending on the complexity, but it’s all real cute all the same. In 1998, I wrote to Eskom and said... 

What makes people smart?

In May 1941, the city of London was bombed and the seat of Parliament, the House of Commons, was very badly damaged. When it was being rebuilt, Winston Churchill was asked if the original seating... 

Running off a cliff

Lemmings do not commit suicide. The little rodents throwing themselves off a cliff is mythical. However, this particular myth is based on actual lemming behaviours. When the concentration of... 

Visually disturbing

Members of the electrical engineering profession are guilty of disturbing the visual environment. You may not have realised this, but it is so.  We erect power station chimney stacks that give off... 

Thirty days

It was recently reported in this fine newspaper: “In an effort to ensure small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in South Africa survive the economic crisis, more than 50 large companies have... 

Fallow South Africans

I don’t speak South African languages with any competence. Our President, apart from his pronunciation of the word ‘fellow’, has a good command of the English language and other South African... 

Sans serif

Claude Shannon is virtually unknown, but his work was fundamental in the creation of the digital computer. A law which he was partly responsible for is the Shannon Hartley law of information... 

2020: The year of wonder

In my second year at the University of the Witwatersrand, in 1972, (yes, people were alive then and could do sums an’ all) the HP 35 calculator was released onto the market by Hewlett Packard. The... 

Twisting the knife

In the wonderful musical, Les Misérables, the lead character, Jean Valjean, goes to a hotel to collect the daughter of Fantine. Fantine has been paying a couple who run an inn to look after her... 

Religious noise complaints

There is a film, The Secret of Santa Vittoria.  Santa Vittoria is an Italian town renowned for its vineyards. In the storyline, at some stage the residents realise that the nearby village could... 

Hydrogen Power

Now that it has finally dawned on some of us that cars with batteries require to be charged and that it takes time for this to happen and its not the same time as needed by the driver to have... 

Can’t get thicker than this

It was reported that, "following months of delay, Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe [had] published the Gazette opening the way for the procurement of 4 800 MW of onshore wind, 2... 

40 years on

When I was 19, I fell in love with a girl who was studying at the University Cape Town (UCT). I was studying at the University of the Witwatersrand at the time and had just finished my second,... 

Electrical scams

You’ve heard of a ‘microgrid’? I Googled it and found that: “A microgrid is a miniaturised version of the larger grid, a configuration of energy resources, distribution wires and buildings, all... 

Wood, trees and very dense forests

Naked and Afraid is a TV programme which documents American couples who are dropped off at some remote location, clothes removed, and try to survive warm and cold, prepare and eat food, stay...