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

Plague of invisible rats

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 17th May 2019 This column is for David and Linda Odd. A potential disaster exists in the form of the coming plague of invisible rats, which are responsible for sudden crop failure, power outages, outbreaks of diseases and unexplained deaths of domestic pets. Government is paying experts to find a solution.... →

Oh Alex

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 10th May 2019 After townships grew all over the areas around Johannesburg from 1950 (and earlier), they remained unelectrified. The authorities who could electrify them (Municipalities and State-owned power utility Eskom) were reluctant to electrify them because, they said, the residents would not pay for the... →

Tilting at windmills

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 3rd May 2019 In Don Quixote, the book by Cervantes (you know, Don Key Oatie – the one where he is a knight who has a horse called Rocinante, pronounced Ros-sin-antey, and a servant, Sancho, and there a donkey called Dapple and Donnie is a bit off his head, you know) there is a quotation which is: "The truth... →

The rain is on the roof, Ahummm

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 26th April 2019 Since we are acoustics engineers and have a website, we often get calls from flakes. A 'flake' is someone who has developed some previously unknown affliction to some noise. They phone me up and then, full of apologies, explain that they hear a buzzing or drone in their ears and they are not sure... →

Fully automated computer mistakes

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 19th April 2019 Deep in the mainframe of the government computers is data that reflects my real name: Terence Eric Mackenzie, surname – Hoy. Well, at least that is what the government has. Over the years, we have had variations: surname – How, Hey, Mckenzie-Hoy, Mckenzie-Hey . . . and so on. The huge benefit in... →

I’m not going to be mayor

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 12th April 2019 Cape Town has always had an attitude. Some years back, advertising icon Reg Lascaris ran an advertisement that had the tag line 'What is Cape Town Without the C?' (work it out). There was a bit of an outcry. This is the Town Where We Are Different. I live in Cape Town and I am not sorry –... →

No, love, you’re not alone

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 5th April 2019 An extract from a song by Jacques Brel: "The newsreel of our life/I'll play it in reverse / Your pain will fall away / We'll relive yesterday / And start where we began, love . . ." So, yes, we have load-shedding. But we were not the first. Back in the day, to reduce electricity consumption, and... →

Bitter evidence of coal, diesel corruption

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 29th March 2019 So, State-owned utility Eskom says it spent R140-million in March 2019 on diesel fuel for Ankerlig and Gourikwa gas turbine generation. Assuming that 70% of the diesel was used by Ankerlig, in the Western Cape, and that the diesel comes from the Astroenergy refinery ( formerly Chevron), in Cape... →

Scrooge McDucks’ electric car

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 22nd March 2019 Pinin is a protein associated with desmosome, a structure which helps hold cells together. Farina (in Italian) is a form of milled wheat. On the other hand, Battista is the name of Scrooge Scrooge McDuck's butler. McDuck is related to Donald Duck. Putting all these highly educational facts... →

The Electricity Regulation Act

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 15th March 2019 Concerning the liability of a licensee for damage or injury, Section 26 of the Electricity Regulation Act states: "In any civil proceedings against a licensee arising out of damage or injury caused by induction or electrolysis or in any other manner by means of electricity generated, transmitted... →

Solving electricity generation issues

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 8th March 2019 Load-shedding has become like an opera that has gone on for too long. The overture is over, the arias have been sung and the swan has died quite a few times. The audience is starting to fidget a bit. Into this arena, I hope, will arise something I suggested tome time back: pay those consumers... →

All-time record

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 1st March 2019 One cannot not write about State-owned electricity utility Eskom. I would love to, but it reminds me of the time that Alastair Cooke broadcast Letter From America in the UK. In those times, there was no Internet, and Cooke recorded his talk on a tape that was flown to London and broadcast two... →

The end of Moore

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 22nd February 2019 There are certainly some of you who have never seen a transistor or held one in your hand. Few will have ever made an electronic circuit using transistors. Briefly, a transistor is an electronic switch that can turn on and off very quickly. In addition it can act as an amplifier to change a small... →

Motorised pogo sticks

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 15th February 2019 During World War 2, it was very important that signals from the various governments involved in the war to the various armies, navies and air forces be kept secret. Signals, or messages, had to be in code or cipher to make them difficult for the opposition to read. A 'code' and a 'cipher' are not... →

Smart grids

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 8th February 2019 An Internet definition of a smart grid is: "An electricity network based on digital technology that is used to supply electricity to consumers via two-way digital communication. This system allows for monitoring, analysis, control and communication within the supply chain to help improve... →

The perfect public address system

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 1st February 2019 In September 2108, Patricia de Lille gave a speech in the Cape Town City Hall as part of the opening of a revamped hall, which project had taken nine months. Despite the hall having a reverberation time of 2.3 seconds, her speech was clear, understandable and free from distortion. The reason for... →

Beta testing

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 25th January 2019 Recently, we (the okes in the office an' me) bought two of a device that is supposed to repel insects. Well, not only. The box (as seen on TV) has a statement that it is an "ultrasonic pest repeller" and will repel "rats, roaches, flies, spiders, mice, fleas, ants and mosquitoes". The devices is... →

Cash flow

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 18th January 2019 In the cartoon the two guys are talking. One says, I have a design problem. The other guy says, there are no problems, only challenges. One such challenge in any consulting engineering business is cash flow. All clients of consulting engineers know that, if they go to the supermarket, they have... →

Working smarter

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 14th December 2018 As I become older, I regret that there are some inventions, electrical and otherwise, which will not be created in my life time. It would be a tragedy if I did not share the invention ideas with you in the hope that some young dynamo would take up the baton. Starting simple. Crying children are... →

Fusion reactors: Tokamak

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 7th December 2018 In 'nuclear fission', the nucleus of an atom breaks up into two lighter nuclei. Okay. I will say that again. You get some atoms which are heavier than others, right? Like lead is heavier than iron (that's why you get more for it at the scrapyard). So uranium is a heavy atom. If you fire a small... →

Killing the professions

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 30th November 2018 I am a qualified electrical engineer who holds a university degree and is registered as a professional engineer with the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA). I am a member of the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers. I have a consulting practice and we offer acoustics and... →

Redoubling Your Effort

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 23rd November 2018 The definition of 'fanaticism' is when you redouble your effort when your aim is forgotten. And in that world of climate change, that area of cosy illusions and comforting half truths, this has finally occurred. The climate believers think that carbon dioxide (CO2) is causing the world to heat... →

A small town in Germany

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 16th November 2018 "Come on, Terence, " said Harry, "don't you know about the Hannover Fair ?" "In Hannover, Germany?" I said. "Exactly," he answered. →

My Mini Budget speech

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 9th November 2018 I read an article that summed up the points made in the speech of our latest Finance Minister, Tito Mobweni. It is a document that is full of this new unit of currency, the 'bn'. Forgive me, I am guessing here but the bn has been created to save paper, I think. Well, not really. Before, one... →

Electric healing

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 2nd November 2018 Many years ago, I had a conversation with a very nice physiotherapist. The subject got onto electrotherapy, the curing of muscular aliments by the application of electricity. She explained to me that there were two types of current: galvanic and faradic. She explained that these had different... →

Potential issues with charging electric vehicles

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 26th October 2018 All the big automotive manufactures are making electric vehicles (EV). Why? I mean that, right now, internal combustion (IC) engines, gearboxes, drive systems, instrumentation . . . the whole lot . . . are pretty much sorted for the conventional cars (let us call them IC cars), so why retool for... →

Electric cars one more time

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 19th October 2018 Audi recently flighted a number of advertisements about its new all-electric car. This is due in 2019 and, if my job was to be an electrical reviewer, I might well go on from there, citing charge times, range, power performance and how to jump-start it if the battery is flat. But I am not going... →

The elephant in the room

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 12th October 2018 From Wikipedia: "The expression 'the elephant in the room' defines a situation which refers to a question, problem, solution or controversial issue which is obvious to everyone who knows about the situation, but which is deliberately ignored because to do otherwise would cause great embarrassment... →

Adventures on the Eskom system – Part 4

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 5th October 2018 In my last column on the Eskom integrated power system, I explained that I worked for Eskom as the senior engineer for operations in the Eastern Cape for nearly two years. My region, the Eastern Cape region, included Port Elizabeth. Eastern Cape Control reported to me and all I had to do was to... →

Yet more adventures on the Eskom system

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 28th September 2018 In my last column on the Eskom integrated power system, I explained that I worked for the State-owned power utility as the senior engineer for operations in the Eastern Cape for nearly two years. The backbone of the national grid was the 400 kV powerline system and the 220 kV powerline system.... →

Recorded music

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 21st September 2018 From the first voice and music recordings of the 1800s, nothing much changed in the early part of the 1900s. Wind-up gramophones with paper mache cones were used for the reproduction of music that was stored on metal or wax discs. There was no electronic amplification – the recording was done by... →

Adventures on the interconnected electricity system

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 14th September 2018 In my last column on the Eskom intergrated power system, I explained that I worked for electricity utility as the senior engineer for operations in the Eastern Cape for just under two years. The backbone of the national grid was the 400 kV powerline system and the 220 kV powerline system, which... →

A reflection on latest IRP iteration

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 7th September 2018 The Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) is a government plan that supposedly sets out the future development of the South African electricity generation system. In theory, government passes the plan around for comment by industry and municipalities and everybody agrees, after which government policy... →

Adventures on the interconnected power system

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 31st August 2018 I worked for State-owned power utility Eskom as the senior engineer for operations in the Eastern Cape for just under two years. It was a fabulous job. I reported to the chief engineer, who, in turn, reported to the regional manager. But both the chief engineer and I had a reporting... →

Electric cars: a real good thing?

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 24th August 2018 When I was young, our family would go to the Natal South Coast on holiday. The roads were not great; so, we would have to stay overnight halfway to Durban. At holiday times, there was a lot of traffic and sometimes the going was slow. Recently, Gregg and I went up the garden route on a project.... →

Riots and strikes

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 17th August 2018 We are in an era of strikes and riots. Workers at State-owned power utility Eskom have been on strike for weeks and have just settled, the taxi drives are on strike, the public workers union are threatening a strike, platinum workers are on strike, and so on. All strikes happen with the usual... →

Playing with mental clarity

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 10th August 2018 There is a serious disconnect between engineers and production idea people. Production idea people want to innovate. They want a new thing every year. They do not want improvements, they want change – out of the box! Dynamic! Some of these ideas are good but few are ground-breaking. What is... →

Professional fees

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 3rd August 2018 You can get advice from a fairly good consulting engineer at a rate of about $700 for an eight-hour day which is near enough to R1 200 an hour. This would be a person who is registered as a professional engineer and has at least 20 years' experience. The rates that individuals and consulting... →

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