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

Engineering gut feel

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 27th July 2018 So, there I was at a site meeting. As acoustics engineers, we had designed a roof build-up for the building which was under construction; firstly, to comply with thermal insulation requirements and, secondly, to comply with sound insulation requirements. We had been called to the site meeting to... →

The elephant in the substation

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 20th July 2018 Everybody knows that renewable energy is great for us all: it is free, it does not pollute, it keeps big bad Eskom on its toes and it represents huge investments in South Africa. What is there not to love? The bids for various wind power farms (this is the amount for which Eskom has to buy power... →

The war is over

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 13th July 2018 Alan Campbell mentioned to me that, since this column is titled Electrically Speaking, it really should be about electricity. Good point. Well, water is normally supplied by pumps, and pumps work on electricity. So, joining the dots, this column is about water. Or more specifically the recent... →

People say . . .

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 6th July 2018 In the Santam television advert, the ever-so-twee sweet likkel girl says that the first person to live to 200 has already been born. Well, she would know, wouldn't she? These sort of statements are whipped out by the media in order to shock and amaze – almost so that we can say how clever we... →

Unbundling Eskom

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 29th June 2018 It should be evident to everybody that State-owned electricity utility Eskom is in the following condition: (a) The road transport coal supply contractors have for years been ripping off the system – the trucks get loaded with good-quality coal, which is driven to an export depot. They then pick... →

Operation North Pole II

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 22nd June 2018 In last week's column, I told of Abwehr officer (German intelligence officer) Herman Giskes, head of Abwehr Section IIIF, who set his mind to capturing British agents who were either dropped by parachute into Holland or landed by boat. This was his plan: the Abwehr should concentrate on trying to... →

Operation North Pole

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 15th June 2018 Once upon a time, I tell the youth, there was a world war called World War II. Germany and Italy were fighting the UK, France and the US. The Germans invaded and occupied France, Holland, Belgium and Norway. The British decided to disrupt the German occupation of France and Holland by parachuting... →

Honest fee proposal

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 8th June 2018 I thought what it would be like to write a fee proposal in which I was honest about the services we will offer in a fee proposal for a contract. Here it is: Dear Client, →

Error messages and biometrics

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 1st June 2018 I thought I would write about error messages but it isnot a long enough topic for a whole column, so, in the later part of this column, I will also write about biometric identification. Error messages are the information that you are given, unusually on a screen, when you enter some data that is... →

The ‘going to the moon’ conspiracy

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 25th May 2018 One of the problems with the 'common man' is that he is really very stupid. Such persons not only do not know but do not know that they do not know. I recently heard somebody discussing the bible. They explained to the dinner guests that some passage "used to be in the bible" but 'they' (some... →

Really back in the day

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 18th May 2018 When I was in first year at the University of the Witwatersrand, in 1972, there were two computers. One was called IBM 360 West and the other IBM 360 East. West was for us students, East was for staff. Each of the computers was housed in an air-conditioned building (unusual at the time – we... →

Wheel of industrial safety has turned too far

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 11th May 2018 There is no hotter topic than safety matters on mines and industrial plants. It has become a religion. Like all religions, it causes some unintended problems. When I was young, I worked for a number of years on various mines and industrial plants. (I did this to get money to pay my university... →

Wither fundamental knowledge?

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 4th May 2018 I was drinking at the bar Elsabe used to call A Touch of Sadness. I was with an architect and Pierre F, a brilliant French fine artist and great conversationalist. Oh, yes, he has a doctorate in oceanography and used to work for the US's National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The... →

Some opportunities

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 27th April 2018 An unusual quiz: you are asked a set of questions which are largely hypothetical but, nevertheless, interesting. The questions are (as far as I remember) as follows: Would you chose to be (a) invisible (b) be able to predict the future (c) be able to read a person's mind but only briefly (d) be... →

Electronic loneliness: the nature of communication

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 20th April 2018 I claim that communication is only possible between two systems which have different information content. The information content of a system is the probability that it will receive a message it has never received before. Put more simply, if my information content is 100%, then I know everything... →

Goodbye to copper

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 13th April 2018 Copper, the metal, has been around for a very long time. The Copper Age predates the Bronze and Iron ages and ran from about 4500 BC to 3500 BC. Copper has stuck with us – wooden ships were sheathed in copper and the domes of buildings were made from copper – it does not corrode. The Statue of... →

Cattle class

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 6th April 2018 I was in Uganda. Lovely people, beautiful scenery, traffic nightmare, airport nightmare. Entebbe International Airport is 40 km from the capital, Kampala. It takes two hours to travel from Entebbe to Kampala. Departing, your baggage is X-rayed three times and you are metal-detected three times.... →

Driverless cars and robots

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 30th March 2018 Let us imagine that two robots, Og and Box, are playing chess against each other. To make sure the game progresses, Og is allowed to make a move every seven seconds. Box is allowed to move every eight seconds. At the fifty-sixth move, there is an impasse, since both are allowed to move. Who moves... →

No visible horizon

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu 23rd March 2018 The title of this column is that of a book written by Joshua Cooper Ramo, which is about flying aerobatics. As you read on, you will find that aerobatics have little to do with this column. But I like the phrase 'no visible horizon', since, I think, it accurately represents the electronic future... →

Engineering design that’s deplorable

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 16th March 2018 My experience with my Mercedes-Benz C180 has been an engineering delight. The driving and ride and interior are a matter for discussion in a motoring magazine – I am talking about engineering, bru. Look at the following: you are driving along and a dog runs in front of the car. In many cars, you... →

New Cabinet appointments

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 9th March 2018 When I worked for State-owned power utility Eskom, the top position went to either to engineer or an accountant, often turn by turn. When the engineer was in charge, the system was solid and reliable and we had all the smart and cool stuff we needed. When the accountants were in charge, the... →

Why the Koeberg nuclear power station was built

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 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

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 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

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 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

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 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

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 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

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 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

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 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

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 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

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 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?

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 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

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 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

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 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

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 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

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 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

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 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

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 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

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy 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... →

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