Terry Mackenzie-hoy

https://staging1.creamermedia.com/

Terry Mackenzie-hoy

Mackenzie-Hoy is a consulting acoustics and electrical engineer – machoy@iafrica.com

Why the Koeberg nuclear power station was built

2nd March 2018 A lot of people are very much against South Africa building another nuclear power station. Many hope that the first project that President Cyril Ramaphosa throws under the bus will be a new nuclear power station. It is a sensitive topic. →

Millions, gigabytes and gigawatts

23rd February 2018 All the really frightening climate change graphs have the vertical scale in tenths of a degree. The scale is from –0.6 oC to 0.8 oC (about 1.4 oC). On the horizontal axis, the time is given as from 1880 to 2018, a period of 138 years. We know that, routinely, temperatures can change from, say, 12... →

Unlikely electrical devices

16th February 2018 Often, a layperson comes up with an idea that is totally not going to work and that sounds as if it will work. Then we electrical engineers have a problem since, no matter what you (we qualified engineers with 34 years experience) say to the layperson, the layperson (LP) produces increasingly... →

Western Cape water crisis

9th February 2018 I think that living by the sea and near Table Mountain has an effect on the local population of Cape Town. Do note that I was brought up in the then Transvaal and, thus, I was told how intelligent the Capetonians were; how civilised and how caring, compared with us carpet baggers who lived on the... →

Getting more efficient

2nd February 2018 About four years ago, I launched a project called the 400 W house. The house I proposed would use no more than an average of 400 W of electricity an hour over a 24 hour period. I specified a fridge that would use 180 W, a TV at 90 W, an induction cooker/hob at 900 W and an induction water heater... →

Back from the dead

26th January 2018 Of late, I have been telling various people about what it is like to be a DNA engineer – where, before you qualify or finish school, it is in your blood. I do not mean that the young child built things out of stuff, thus indicating engineering traits; I mean that the child, from young, had... →

German fascination with SA wind power

19th January 2018 Germans seem to be very interested in wind power generation in South Africa. Don't know why. First we had German-born Dr Tobias Bischof-Niemz running the Energy Centre at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). In this position, he proposed a power generation model that was... →

Smoke and mirrors

15th December 2017 In September 2016, a '50-year-event' storm occurred in South Australia. Power system voltage transients caused nine wind farms to shut down, and two large wind farms – the Hornsdale wind farm and the Snowtown wind farm – reduced output by 86 MW and 106 MW respectively in the space of one second.... →

Phase angles

8th December 2017 I was in a courtroom the other day and the public prosecutor was asking questions . Unfortunately they were not engineering questions and I am an engineer. Thus, I did not understand the questions or why they were being asked. As a true engineer, I would say, "Ah, if you mean . . .", and I would... →

What should we ban?

1st December 2017 Edgar Allen Poe wrote that he took drugs, since "it has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom”. Chuck Palahniuk wrote :“I admire addicts. In a world where everybody is waiting for some... →

Justice confused

24th November 2017 In the State vs Oscar Pistorius case, we all know what may have happened. The trial can also aspire to a record – the worst forensic evidence in South African legal history, ever. This does not relate to bloodstains and fingerprints, but simple scientific evidence that could have been tested on a... →

A little nuke never hurt nobody

17th November 2017 I recently told a group of people at a pub (a pub, can you believe?) that I thought Donald Trump was a "good idea". There was the sort of silence that you get when the stage magician vanishes completely and then the sort of shouting that follows when Sandra Bullock asks who would like to go with... →

Far too high up

10th November 2017 Some time ago, I was in a court case as an expert witness. The advocate gave me a number to call him. It was his wife's cellphone number; he said it was no good me calling his cellphone because it was switched off, as the press never stopped calling him and he thought they may be bugging his... →

100 years from now

3rd November 2017 When the Trojans found a horse on the beach, I am quite sure that the first thing they thought was not: "How kind of those Greek lads", but rather: "Whatever are they up to?" We have similar horse. Ever friendly and kind Google lets us use Google Earth without charge. We even get a street view of... →

How we work at my consulting practice

27th October 2017 I thought I would write about how we, at my consulting practice, work. We have a fairly unique working system – perhaps the only one of its kind in South Africa. Read on. But, first, what we do. We are consulting engineers – specifically, consulting acoustics and electrical engineers. But this is... →

Just havin’ fun

20th October 2017 Oh, woe to all of you who are married to engineers. Engineers are generally useful people to have around. But, when watching TV, if something is shown that is not correct engineering-wise, the engineer will snort and launch into a detailed explanation as to why the TV is wrong. You want to... →

Bitcoins – a quick way to lose it all

13th October 2017 We all know that there IS a thing called a bitcoin. All over the show, there are stories about bitcoin investors who are now millionaires. What is the truth? A little story: Tim and I were working at a mining camp in the Congo. The mining camp was dry; no alcohol permitted. We followed the rules... →

Sparklepop and the Magic Dragon

6th October 2017 Sometimes I get involved in advertising film shoots. The first advertising film shoot that I attended was in the 1980s. It was held in a large open concrete yard owned by Eskom. The storyline was: a pretty woman is walking along a sidewalk, next to a tree-lined road. We cut to a man who is... →

Fade to black

29th September 2017 About 20 years ago, I wrote the following: "What do you see? You see the ruins of a building. It has burnt down. There are pathetic little burnt bundles of bits strewn around everywhere. And the coroner (the coroner! ) is there. He's investigating what could have possibly caused this... →

An ill wind

22nd September 2017 One commentator said this: "The renewable energy purchase programme, launched in 2011, has been celebrated as a spectacular success directing private capital into public infrastructure and a model for attempts to lure private investment into other projects." I am sure this is how wind farm... →

Fate is against us

15th September 2017 Recently, somebody was discussing minibus taxis and how badly they drive. It was mentioned that, in fact, they drive very well: they pass through the narrowest of gaps between cars, they glide down pavements. They can reverse at high speed through rush hour traffic. They can embark and disembark... →

Pluck the strings and weep

8th September 2017 On May 8, 2016, supporters of the green movement reached a moment of nirvana – the state of perfect peace, highest happiness and liberation from the repeating cycle of birth, life and death. Not since the end of Margaret Thatcher had their dreams been so realised. The huge event was this: on a... →

Tell me a funny story

1st September 2017 So, since the 20-year rule (the period that has to elapse before I can tell embarrassing engineering stories where my clients who were involved) has lapsed in some cases, here is one of the stories. I was working for FW. Empersa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos de Moçambique (ENH) had decided that... →

The unintended effect of excessive safety measures

25th August 2017 Sometimes certain things just come to a logical plateau. The best way of doing them or the best process for achieving a result has been found. I have this belief that the process of safety education was once at a pinnacle and is now going downhill. I am not sure why this is the case, but I think... →

Electrical Power Generation 101

18th August 2017 A few things we should possibly all know if we wish to talk about energy. The national grid is not a energy storage dam. What goes into the grid comes out of the grid very shortly, almost instantaneously. Thus, the amount of power generated matches the amount of power used, apart of losses due to... →

The costs of safety

11th August 2017 A well known South African electrical cable manufacturer will not hold it against me when I say that, at one time, about 25 years ago, the manufacturer ran the most unsafe cable making operation that I had seen. To the accompaniment of whistles and shouts, a group of men dragged wires, PVC... →

Electrical surgery

4th August 2017 It has long been clear to me that it is about time that State-owned power utility Eskom was sliced up and sold. You have to understand that I am a great supporter of Eskom; I worked for the utility and I greatly admire some of its systems, in particular, the distribution maintenance systems.... →

The limits of communication

28th July 2017 Communications on the planet began when the world was at a stage where messages from one tribe of people to another did not involve the messenger being executed on arrival. The top speed of communication was the speed of a galloping horse or, in rough terrain, the speed of a running person.... →

Hold my hand, you silly girl

21st July 2017 On the November 26, 2011, I wrote: "After a recent tour, Public Enterprises Minister Malusi Gigaba has said the December 2013 deadline for the Medupi power station, in Lephalale, Limpopo, to start delivering power still stands. 'I have no intention of allowing any delays to the target of December... →

Inventions and developments and war

14th July 2017 We all know that Charles H Duell, the commissioner of the US patent office in 1899. His most famous attributed utterance is that "everything that can be invented has been invented". In point of fact, he said nothing of the kind. The myth of him saying this is very unfortunate because it suggests... →

A good disaster

7th July 2017 Do they still have, one wonders, the good old engineering Friday afternoon braai? For the sake of moral, it used to be that, at the end of every month, on a site, they would have a braai, usually starting at 15:00. The beers would be floating in a water-and-ice mixture in a galvanised bath (know... →

A long, relaxed look at wind farms

30th June 2017 About two years ago, I was travelling on a train from London to York. On the way I passed the Drax power station. Drax was built to fire coal but at the time it was burning imported wood chips, which, by some logic of a green fanatic, was better for the planet than burning coal. The fact that... →

Disaster on different continents

23rd June 2017 It is storms and rain in Cape Town. I have been in countries where natural disasters have occurred and have been reported on the television (okay, clever clogs, they have been reported on radio, newspaper, the Internet and by word-of-mouth at the local pub but, in this column . . . television). →

Oh, for the good old days of no email

16th June 2017 At the time of the first free elections, in 1994, I shared an office with Alan Campbell. His nickname is Camel, since many people spell his surname without a 'p'. Camel is eccentric, and so am I. On the door to our office, we had the Latin quote: AP Campbell & T Mackenzie Hoy: Caput archimagirus... →

Water, water everywhere . . .

9th June 2017 A year ago, we had electricity load-shedding and now, in the Western Cape, we may have water-shedding. There is a very very serious water shortage in the Western Cape. There is a website that gives updates on the steady decline of the dam levels. At the time of writing, the dams were 19.7 % full,... →

The Golden Flywheel

2nd June 2017 I was talking with a Zimbabwean recently about his country and he said, "Very bad." And then he added: "Your turn next", referring to South Africa. Some think that, back in the days of apartheid, "things were better". So I thought I would write about how things were, in fact, back in the days of... →

Life imitating art at power utility Eskom

26th May 2017 There is a most wonderful musical, A Little Night Music, which is based on a film by Ingmar Bergen, Smiles of a Summer Night. Probably the very best known song from A Little Night Music is Send in the Clowns. The last lines of the song are: "And where are the clowns? / Quick, send in the clowns /... →

From incandescent light bulbs to laser lights

19th May 2017 The incandescent light bulb, rated at about 60 W, is one we all know and which endeared for about 130 years. Along the way had been invented various other types of light: gas-discharge lamps (such as streetlights) fluorescent lamps, metal halide lamps, and so on. But, for a very long time, basic... →

More about electric cars

12th May 2017 In a previous instalment of this column, I wrote about Mercedes-Benz going to produce an electric car. By this I mean the automaker is going to produce a car for sale to the to the public that will be 100% electrical in drive – it will not be a hybrid car with a generator that switches on when... →

Electric cars

5th May 2017 Michael Douglas, the actor starred in the 1987 film, Wall Street, played Gordon Gecko, who decreed that "greed is good". In the sequel to the film, Gekko, in 2000, is released from prison after serving eight years for insider trading and securities fraud. He is handed his possessions, which were... →

Winging it

28th April 2017 Not too long ago, I asked a young engineer to build an item of equipment. It was not very complicated; when the temperature rose above a certain level, a relay should close, which would energise a socket outlet to power a cooling device. At the same time, if the temperature fell below a certain... →

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