Engineering News | Terry Mackenzie-Hoy | Electrically Speaking

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Terry Mackenzie-hoy

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

Fallow South Africans

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 27th November 2020 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 languages. When he addresses us on the occasional Thursday, he raises matters of Covid-19 and... →

Sans serif

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 20th November 2020 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 transmission, which states that the maximum amount of information that can be transmitted is proportional... →

2020: The year of wonder

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 13th November 2020 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 calculator weighed only 255 g. Named for its 35 keys, the device enabled users to make complicated... →

Twisting the knife

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 6th November 2020 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 daughter, Cosette. When Valjean gets to the inn, the innkeepers make him pay large sums of cash for... →

Religious noise complaints

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 30th October 2020 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 hear the sound of the bell in the Vittoria church and use it to mark the time of morning mass. The... →

Hydrogen Power

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 23rd October 2020 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 refreshment… enter the promise of the hydrogen fuel cell car. Now it happens that I own a hydrogen fuel... →

Can’t get thicker than this

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 16th October 2020 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, 2 000 MW of solar photovoltaic (PV), 3 000 MW of gas- or diesel-to-power, 1 500 MW of new coal and... →

40 years on

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 9th October 2020 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, second year of electrical engineering. But, in the July holidays, I had met this girl and decided that I... →

Electrical scams

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 2nd October 2020 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 within a distinct geographic footprint. There is no size limit, but microgrids tend to be scaled to... →

Wood, trees and very dense forests

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 25th September 2020 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 hydrated, suffer insects and predators, all for 21 days. Each participant is allowed to take with them... →

Corruption 101

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 18th September 2020 Every so often, we (my consulting practice) get an email request to quote on the supply of a service or an item of equipment for which we are agents. These requests vary from a simple email to a request-for-quotation (RFQ) document of some complexity. The simple email requests can be categorised... →

Energy twaddle

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 11th September 2020 An article in Tech Central begins: “What if I told you that our energy crisis could be alleviated with one simple change? Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? But, as a professional, with almost a decade of experience working in the energy space, I can tell you it’s that simple.” The author goes on to... →

Protect our heritage

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 4th September 2020 Port, sherry, champagne, Melton Mowbray pies, Cornish pasty, Scotch Whiskey, et cetera, are products whose names are protected by international laws. The notional purpose of the laws is to (I quote) “protect the reputation of the regional foods, help producers obtain a premium price for their... →

Seriously misguided again

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 28th August 2020 I recently wrote about a court case between the National Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) and Eskom, which Eskom won. Nersa is a government body that is supposed to regulate the electricity, piped-gas and petroleum pipeline industries in terms of the various applicable national regulations. By... →

Letter to the President

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 21st August 2020 My editor has discouraged me from writing about politics in this column, and I think rightly so. My father and my mother were in the Second World War, in uniform, and both had a very healthy distrust of politicians, which they passed on to their children. Thus, I have a very keen sense of what... →

The sublime to the ridiculous

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 14th August 2020 Ah, let’s have a few trick questions: (Q) What is the difference between a Cape Town MYCITY Bus and a fire on Guy Fawkes Day? (A) The Guy Fawkes fire only gets burnt to ashes once a year. (Q) When will Cape Town trains be able to provide transport to all Capetonians? (A) When people stop burning... →

Nondirectional geese

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 7th August 2020 I live in Pinelands, Cape Town. Somebody has to. Pinelands is dull. It is one of two suburbs in Cape Town that do not permit the sale of alcohol or the licensing of bars. If you want a good night’s drinking, Pinelands is not your place. A potential girlfriend broke it off with me because I live... →

How to cure a hide

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 31st July 2020 These days, tanning a hide is an automatic process that generally involves chromium sulphate, a kind of salt, as the tanning agent. However, back in the days when there was no chromium sulphate, hides were cured using a process called brain tanning. What you do after skinning the animal is to... →

Substation Time Bombs

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 24th July 2020 About five years ago, I made a policy decision that I would never go into an 1 000 V substation again unless it was maintained by a reputable authority. Most 11 000 V substations are worse than 400 V substations and higher voltage substations. If a 400 V substation has a fault, there will be a... →

Seriously misguided

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 17th July 2020 One thing feared by all production businesses is a sudden change in profit. ‘Production businesses’ are businesses which take a lot of materials and convert these into something else – for example, mines take ore and produce metals, milling factories take wool and weave it into fabrics, clothing... →

While Rome burns

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 10th July 2020 In 2019, commercial aviation used 90-billion US gallons of jet fuel, which is basically paraffin. This is 374 755 766 616 ℓ which, in Africa, is impela enkulu. In November 2012, I wrote the following: “Okay, all you bright people, what do paraffin lamps and US passenger jet engines have in... →

40 years on

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 3rd July 2020 Now it happens that, 40 years ago, I had just finished my university degree and was on my way to the South African Navy to spend two years as a guest of government. At that time, the state of the electrical supply was this: houses and buildings were supplied with electricity by cables and power... →

Fantasy of the Greens

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 26th June 2020 I regularly communicate with a group of engineering types who are all power-[Unknown A1] generation minded and we regularly write about how misguided the green movement is regarding power generation to the grid or, if you like, grids around the world. I cannot speak for my engineering group,... →

Splitting Eskom into three

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 19th June 2020 On February 7, 2019, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced in his State of the Nation Address that State-owned power utility Eskom would be remodelled and split into three State-owned entities dealing with generation, transmission and distribution. It was noted that Eskom was in a deep financial... →

The old blood

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 12th June 2020 There is nobody who will say that the new CEO of State-owned electricity utility Eskom, André de Ruyter, is doing a bad job. When he took over, Eskom was in a bad way. It was rife with corruption and coal theft, poor maintenance and had two overpriced new power stations which had been poorly... →

Same taxi, different driver

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 5th June 2020 The following is from an article from the Seven Pillars Institute: “Some of the company’s personnel pocketed a brokerage percentage from suppliers, overloaded ships with personal cargoes for trading, diluted precious metals to produce more volume, colluded with other traders and inspectors, and... →

All the help we can get

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 29th May 2020 I own a small consulting engineering practice with a staff of five. Our work is consulting in acoustics and noise control. We are not considered essential to any project (as, for example, the structural engineer, mechanical engineer and others are) and, in general, when clients wish to cut... →

Icarus

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 22nd May 2020 In mythology, Icarus was the son of Daedalus. The latter wanted to escape from the island of Crete and so used wax and feathers to build some wings for himself and his son Icarus. Daedalus warned his son to fly at a middle height – too low and the seawater will dampen the wings; too high and the... →

Bowling for Michael Moore

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 15th May 2020 Michael Moore is a famous film director, and one of the films he directed is Bowling for Columbine. The title refers to the true story that two students in their late teens – Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, of Columbine High School, in the US state of Colorado – murdered 12 students and one... →

Prophets of doom

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 8th May 2020 I have before me an article from a newspaper published in Cape Town. The headline is ‘Worst fire season feared’. It goes on to quote whoever who as saying we should be very concerned and uses words like ‘fynbos’ and ‘urban edge’ and ‘endangered ecosystems’ and stuff. There is also a report on a... →

Painting lines on the workshop floor

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 1st May 2020 Sometime back, in 1994, when the new government had taken over, there was a great deal of backslapping and self-congratulation by new Parliamentarians and officials and settling in and stuff. However, there wasn't much action. This country had come to an almost dead halt, while some people had... →

Virus stories

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 24th April 2020 I did promise not to write about Eskom and the virus. I can leave Eskom alone but, as to the virus, it is a bit like saying to Samuel Pepys, who kept a diary in 1665, at the time of the great plague of London: "Hey, stop your scribbling, man!" Like Pepys, I keep a diary but, unlike Pepys, I... →

Tapping into our readers’ minds

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 17th April 2020 To write about State-owned electricity utility Eskom, the virus and government is boring. So, I am going to use this time to get our Engineering News & Mining Weekly readers to solve a few problems. When members of your family are glued to Episode 10 of Series 3 of How to Get Away with Murder, we... →

Massive benefits of the virus

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 10th April 2020 Some time back – more than ten years – the economy was swimming along. I had five staff and one of them stopped me in the office and asked if she could have a word with me. No problem. She said that she was not ungrateful, but . . . I knew what was coming after “but”. And it did. She asked if I... →

The more seriously good aspects of Covid-19

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 3rd April 2020 A very good aspect about the coronavirus disease, or Covid-19, is that I need not go to those very tedious meetings, which last three hours, during which I will be asked to advise on the project acoustics aspects for a two-minute period and will have to just listen for the rest of the time.... →

Open letter to South African politicians

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 27th March 2020 Ah, yes, at last! When Martin Creamer agreed to publish this column, he requested that I avoid politics. And so I shall. This letter is addressed to all of you politicians, far left to far right. Suits to overalls. Women and men, and others. Dear politicians →

The butterfly effect

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 20th March 2020 The butterfly effect is a terribly sweet observation that the fluttering of the wings of a butterfly can be the trigger for a massive destructive storm. Taking the power generated by the wings of a butterfly (of the order of microwatts, if not less) into account, the system surrounding the... →

Cape Town saves Eskom

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 13th March 2020 With regard to power from independents power producers (IPPs), Cape Town's acting mayor, Ian Neilson, is quoted in The Citizen newspaper as saying “The City is fighting for the right to buy cleaner energy directly from the IPPs to improve energy security. This move comes as the energy crisis in... →

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