Toronto Electricians and Electrical Contractors

Trust Us, We’re Secretly Working for a Foreign Government: How Australia’s Proposed Surveillance Laws Will Break The Trust Tech Depends On In the last few years, we’ve discovered just how much trust — whether we like it or not — we have all been obliged to place in modern technology. Third-party software, of unknown composition and security, runs on everything around us: from the phones we carry around, to the smart devices with microphones and cameras in our homes and offices, to voting machines, to critical infrastructure. The insecurity of much of that technology, and increasingly discomforting motives of the tech giants that control it from afar, has rightly shaken many of us. But latest challenge to our collective security comes not from Facebook or Google or Russian hackers or Cambridge Analytica: it comes from the Australian government. Their new proposed “Access and Assistance” bill would require the operators of all of that technology to comply with broad and secret gove...

There’s no question about it. The role of today’s CIO in the digital world is changing faster than ever. As CIOs, we no longer just manage IT systems and services across an enterprise. Instead, we’re key contributors to shaping and driving a company’s digital transformation (or DX) strategy. And what an exciting role that is to take on! After all, digital inherently is a customer-centric value proposition, so we’re instrumental in ensuring that every level of an enterprise hinges around the customer. As the Global CIO of Schneider Electric, which is leading the digital transformation of energy management and automation across key markets , here are some of the concrete lessons at the forefront of this journey: Define the evolutionary leaps: digitization v. digital. Let’s start at square one. CIOs have been grappling with the terms “digitization” and “digital,” sometimes without pause to clarify any confusion or conflation of these very different concepts. Jeanne Ross, principal rese...

Sen. Wyden Confirms Cell-Site Simulators Disrupt Emergency Calls Sen. Ron Wyden has sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice concerning disruptions to 911 emergency services caused by law enforcement’s use of cell-site simulators (CSS, also known as IMSI catchers or Stingrays). In the letter, Sen. Wyden states that: Senior officials from the Harris Corporation—the manufacturer of the cell-site simulators used most frequently by U.S. law enforcement agencies—have confirmed to my office that Harris’ cell-site simulators completely disrupt the communications of targeted phones for as long as the surveillance is ongoing. According to Harris, targeted phones cannot make or receive calls, send or receive text messages, or send or receive any data over the Internet. Moreover, while the company claims its cell-site simulators include a feature that detects and permits the delivery of emergency calls to 9-1-1, its officials admitted to my office that this feature has not been...

Twenty-five years ago, electrical system consulting engineers and specifiers were using calculators and PC-powered spreadsheets (remember VisiCalc?) to design and spec’ systems. A simulation was something done on a benchtop. CAD was in its infancy, with server processing speeds measured in MIPS and Product specs were downloaded from a CD-ROM. The industry has evolved , adapted to and harnessed emerging technologies, understanding and responding to the business impact of new power technologies such as renewable energy, sensor-based smart systems and building automated controls. Leveraging design and collaboration tools such as CAD, VR-based simulation or rapid prototyping and 3D printing. But what if your company had been 12 months, two years or even five years ahead of the curve in predicting, what would your business look like today if you had a view of what was on the horizon back then? What new business models might have given you a competitive edge? And what lies ahead in the ne...

You’ve heard it said: “defense wins championships”. Yet every year we see franchises invest in a few select positions without a complementary emphasis on supporting roles. We know offense and defense don’t actually stand on their own — and the most complete teams maximize performance and mitigate weaknesses. The same can be said for managing power systems. Historically, protection, control and automation have been managed in silos rather than as a cohesive ecosystem. In today’s connected environment, however, you can’t build a winning power system with a siloed approach. Protection, control and automation must be integrated to form a comprehensive system that delivers optimal situational awareness and uncompromising reliability and performance. We see this shift especially when modernizing legacy power systems; rather than a simplistic product-centric approach, engineers and consultants must focus on the overall ecosystem taking advantage of the connected benefits of modern technolog...

The first post in this series explained why following IEC 61439 ensures quality switchboards, panels and assemblies. In short, adhering to the standard means that everything in an assembly works as it should now and will continue to do so for years to come. This will be true despite aging components and such environmental factors as heat, humidity and pollution. This is particularly important because failures and problems in switchboards and assemblies can have serious consequences. For instance, electrical faults cause more than half of India’s industrial disasters . Worldwide, 80 percent of assemblies do not comply with IEC 61439. Previous posts in this series have shown how the standard applies to the testing of protection devices, creepage and clearance distances, insulating materials, and withstand voltage. I’ve also gone over the impact of thermal stability and reliability. This post, the last in the series , will look at the role played by and impact of electrical conductivi...