Toronto Electricians and Electrical Contractors

All buildings, from hospitals to data centers, are undergoing a subtle revolution. Behind the scenes, it’s a new world. Inside the walls and tucked away in server closets, the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud-connected building management systems (BMSs) are re-shaping the way buildings work in the digital age.   Three step changes The next phase in the evolution of buildings is not architectural — it’s digital. Where exactly this digital transformation is headed is a big question, and for good reason: We spend, on average, nearly 90 percent of our day inside buildings [1] — they are central to our lives.  In this post, I want to explore three changes that are creating long-term value for both investors and end-users alike. These step changes are efficiency , buildings as financial assets , and end-user centricity .   The efficiency challenge Unquestionably, buildings and cities face an efficiency challenge. By 2050, 2.5 billion people are expected to migrate to ...

EFF and MuckRock Release Records and Data from 200 Law Enforcement Agencies’ Automated License Plate Reader Programs EFF and MuckRock have filed hundreds of public records requests with law enforcement agencies around the country to reveal how data collected from automated license plate readers (ALPR) is used to track the travel patterns of drivers. We focused exclusively on departments that contract with surveillance vendor Vigilant Solutions to share data between their ALPR systems. Today we are releasing records obtained from 200 agencies, accounting for more than 2.5-billion license plate scans in 2016 and 2017. This data is collected regardless of whether the vehicle or its owner or driver are suspected of being involved in a crime. In fact, the information shows that 99.5% of the license plates scanned were not under suspicion at the time the vehicles’ plates were collected. On average, agencies are sharing data with a minimum of 160 other agencies through Vigilant Solution...

Written by Elvis Colon, Services Business Manager, North America Operations In 1994, after serving in the US Army as a Prime Power Specialist, I came to a point in my military career where I needed to make a decision. Go all in and stay until retirement, or join the civilian world after 10 years in the military. My family situation at the time made choose the later. Time in the Military My military service took me to war and other conflicts like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait during Desert Shield/Desert Storm operation. It also took me to Bosnia, Turkey, Somalia, South Korea and a few other places. Our main responsibilities were to deploy and provide reliable electrical power in a large scale all over the world, both during conflicts and peaceful missions. Some of our greatest jobs included powering the Patriot Missile and Hospital sites during desert Storm.  We set up power plants to support road construction and community development on remote, rural areas. During my years of servic...

Even power connections that are perfectly installed tend to loosen over time; avoiding this can head off serious problems Our previous post in this series discussed how important it is for installers to use the correct torque when tightening power connections, and some of the reasons these connections are prone to loosening over time. We also described technology that incorporates spring elements to maintain the integrity of the connection over the long term. In this post, we explain why keeping the power connection tight is so important, and what happens without this type of protection. Elements of a good connection Making a good connection at the contactor or circuit breaker, where electrical power is being supplied, begins with the selection of the proper type and size of cable. Preparing the cable includes removing the specified amount of insulation—not too much, but not too little, either—as well as twisting the cable end and sometimes adding surface treatment as appropriate, ...

The coastal town of Fairfield, Connecticut, has won accolades as one of the best places to live in America. The town’s 5 miles of beach that stretch along the Long Island Sound add to its charm. But when severe storms pummel the Northeastern seaboard, coastal living in this town can be dangerous and inconvenient. Crushing waves have flooded streets and even destroyed coastal homes in recent years. Along with the wind, rain, and water comes downed power lines and prolonged outages. Townspeople worry about reports that the worst is yet to come — that “storms of the century” are the new norm for residents of Connecticut and across the U.S. In an effort to proactively mitigate the damage and discomfort caused by future storms, Connecticut is an early leader in microgrid development . Now, if the power goes out, the town’s critical facilities can rely on a microgrid for electricity. A new energy era In July 2012, Connecticut’s Governor Dannel Malloy passed legislation demanding an imp...

We all know that downtime for any business can be expensive, even devastating. But did you know the cost of downtime is rising? Aberdeen Group reports that, on average across all industries, downtime costs are up from $164k per hour in 2014 to $260k per hour in 2017. That’s an increase of 60% in just 3 years! When it comes to downtime, motors are a disproportionally large contributor compared to other causes, simply because motors are used is so many processes, from pumping to material management. So, a failure in a motor will have a serious ripple effect on productivity. How do motors fail? The most common failure mode for a motor is when it is under excessive load. Such a condition causes an increased draw of current, which then causes overheating. It’s this overheating that causes the undue wear on motor components that ultimately results in failure. However, it’s short circuits in motors that pose the greatest dangers for the equipment, the installation, and for personnel. The...

Genpact, a former Business Process Outsourcing unit within General Electric, became an independent company in 2005 to bring their process expertise in Lean Six Sigma to clients outside the GE family. At the time they could only imagine growing from 32,000 employees and revenue of US$823 million in 2005 to 60,000+ employees and revenues of nearly US$2 billion in 2012. And while they appreciate their success, the fast pace of growth has created a number of IT challenges as well. In 2011, they discovered flaws with their expanded IT infrastructure, limiting their ability to properly manage it. Their pressing need to overhaul their infrastructure was further complicated by vendor management issues.  Aligning Genpact’s data center with business growth After taking feedback from all independent departments within the company, it became clear that there was a need for revamping existing monitoring and management processes and tools. And modular and hot-swappable data center solutions w...

Any person with the minutest idea about how industries function in today’s day-and-age can vouch for the fact that the manufacturing sector has become the driving force when it comes to dictating the pace at which a country’s economy develops. However, one of the significant questions that most people ask in regard to this sector is as follows – what tools are crucial to ensure the optimal functioning of this industry? Keeping this query in mind, it must be said that one of the most vital components that govern the industry’s functions is none other than the Programmable Logic Controller, or PLC for short. Automation is an exceedingly helpful form of technology that has governed the functioning of numerous types of machinery present in the manufacturing sector. PLC is one such form of technology that has become commonplace with the prevalence of automation. It continuously monitors the various input processes involved in the functioning of a particular form of machinery and optimises...

If you are a technology junkie, you must have heard of the term IoT. It has taken the world by storm and has sparked so many conversations. But for those who don’t know what IoT is, it stands for the Internet of Things, where everything from household chores to industrial practices can be made at the touch of a button. All you have to do is connect devices with automated systems as they help in gathering information, analysing and creating necessary action. IoT is an umbrella term, and Industrial internet of things comes under it which mainly focuses on the manufacturing sector. It has the potential to amplify output and efficiency. Since the commencement of IIoT, a behavioural shift has been across industries. Therefore, it does not restrict itself to hardcore technology but has extended its arms to other sectors like Agriculture and retail. IIoT can permeate into the manufacturing industry so rapidly because the products, markets, and processes have a high inclination to adopt it q...

Announcing the Security Education Companion The need for robust personal digital security is growing every day. From grassroots groups to civil society organizations to individual EFF members, people from across our community are voicing a need for accessible security education materials to share with their friends, neighbors, and colleagues. We are thrilled to help. Today, EFF has launched the Security Education Companion, a new resource for people who would like to help their communities learn about digital security but are new to the art of security training. It’s rare to find someone with not only technical expertise but also a strong background in pedagogy and education. More often, folks are stronger in one area: someone might have deep technical expertise but little experience teaching, or, conversely, someone might have a strong background in teaching and facilitation but be new to technical security concepts. The Security Education Companion is meant to help these kinds ...

The recent announcement that the Global Mining Standards and Guidelines (GMSG) will establish a new Working Group on Chain of Custody that will “explore how Blockchain technology enhances traceability of industry commodities” got me thinking. How does Blockchain apply to mining , and more to the point, what are the implications for mining operations? The first distributed Blockchain was implemented in 2009 as a core component of  bitcoin  where it served as the public  ledger  for all transactions. The invention of Blockchain for bitcoin made it the first digital currency to solve the problem of double spending  without the need for a central trusted authority or server .  Its use in bitcoin has led to it being used in other applications today, including the recording of events and medical records, as well as other records-management activities like identity management and transaction processing.  If you want some additional primers on Bloc...

Downtime in the oil and gas industry is expensive . What’s more, the cost of a mishap on an offshore platform can run in the billions of dollars and have an impact for years. Integrating an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) with the right capabilities in the emergency power network on a platform ensures that the low voltage network and the devices that depend upon it continue to function. This reduces the risk of downtime and a potential safety lapse. Unlike facilities on land, oil and gas offshore platforms often have only one way to get the power they need: they must generate it locally. More so today than in the past , this is typically done with a gas turbine, sized such that it can produce the required peak load of as much as 90 MW of electricity. The turbine’s output runs through a transformer, which renders the power suitable for the rest of the low voltage devices like circuit breakers, contactors and transformers. These and other components are found in substations and the r...

Stupid Patent Data of the Month: the Devil in the Details A Misunderstanding of Data Leads to a Misunderstanding of Patent Law and Policy Bad patents shouldn’t be used to stifle competition. A process to challenge bad patents when they improperly issue is important to keeping consumer costs down and encouraging new innovation. But according to a recent post on a patent blog, post-grant procedures at the Patent Office regularly get it “wrong,” and improperly invalidate patents. We took a deep dive into the data being relied upon by patent lobbyists to show that contrary to their arguments, the data they rely on undermines their arguments and conflicts with the claims they’re making. The Patent Office has several procedures to determine whether an issued patent was improperly granted to a party that does not meet the legal standard for patentability of an invention. The most significant of these processes is called inter partes review, and is essential to reining in overly broad...

Perhaps you’ve heard this stat before, or something like it: 70% of data center outages are directly attributable to human error. It’s a scary stat to be sure, especially when you consider that it comes from an Uptime Institute analysis of its “abnormal incident” database, meaning it’s based on actual data center outages, not some statistical derivation. For anyone charged with operating data centers, the stat should raise the question, “OK, so how do we improve data center operations?” That is the basic question addressed in a new e-book, “12 Essential Elements of Data Center Facility Operations.” The e-book describes the management principles and operational program elements that it takes to run a mission critical data center efficiently and reliably throughout its life cycle. It also looks at emerging cloud-based data center monitoring services and explains how they are transforming data center operations. The guide presents a balanced approach to a facility management program ...

Written by Guest Blogger,  Mariana C. Gonzalez . At Schneider Electric, cultivating a corporate culture of high-performance is key for all levels of the organization. The ambition of creating a culture of high-performance that employees experience and exemplify in a consistent and sustainable manner is inextricably tied to, and supported by, our Well-Being internal company campaign , which focuses on the physical, mental, emotional, and social dimensions of wellness. As someone who in the past practiced Zen meditation daily for years and has recently re-committed to a daily practice, I was pleased to see the teaching of mindfulness as part of the well-being and high-performance agendas, and that Schneider Electric understands the value of incorporating a contemplative or meditative practice into one’s daily life, not just to improve performance, concentration, decision-making, and productivity, but to support optimal stress/emotional management and self-care. Our Schneider Elect...

Andrew Hughes joined the LNS Research team in May of 2015 and is a Principal Analyst with his primary focus being research and analysis in the Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) practice. Andrew has 30 years of experience in manufacturing IT, software research, sales and management across a broad spectrum of manufacturing industries. In our last blog on Smart Connected Operations , we looked at the trend of connecting new data sources, Smart Connected Devices (SCD), directly to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). It is clear that SCDs are proliferating and will bring new information to manufacturing enterprises. That data is already finding uses in some of the low hanging fruit of the IIoT such as predictive maintenance. However, the promise of the IIoT goes far beyond a few data points gathered by new smart devices. Thinking Big Data Big Data Analytics is one of the key promises of IIOT and Smart Manufacturing; while we do not want to  go into depth about the dif...