Toronto Electricians and Electrical Contractors

California’s Net Neutrality Bill Should Be Signed Into Law Millions of Californians are waiting for Gov. Jerry Brown to affirm their call for a free and open Internet. After Congress reversed the Federal Communication Commission’s 2015 Open Internet Order, states have had to step up to ensure that all traffic on the Internet is treated equally. Gov. Brown’s signature would make California the fourth state to pass a law offering net neutrality protections to its residents. While EFF applauds the states that have taken steps to provide net neutrality protections, we believe California’s is the strongest measure in the country. It goes beyond the basic protections laid out in Washington and Oregon to prevent blocking and interference to ensure that Internet service providers cannot circumvent net neutrality protections at any point in delivering service to consumers. The bill also goes further than other measures by prohibiting ISPs in California from using the practice of discri...

In my last blog , I described the three reasons which steer the energy world toward a fully electric one: a unique decarbonization potential, with vast easily accessible reserves around the world, powering a much more efficient energy system. It is time to develop the latter of these assertions and evaluate some of its potential consequences. Doubling the efficiency of the energy system, at reach   The overall efficiency of the energy system is still a barely discussed concept today. Yet, the energy system we currently live in, which has brought massive benefits to our world’s economic development, leading our world to the spectacle of global industrialization, as well as three times more energy consumed per capita over the course of the 20 th century, is largely inefficient. It is its main weakness. Most of the waste, which ends up in air pollution, occurs in two primary areas: One that is well known, the tremendous losses associated with the conventional production of electr...

Platform Censorship: Lessons From the Copyright Wars There’s a lot of talk these days about “content moderation.” Policymakers, some public interest groups, and even some users are clamoring for intermediaries to do “more,” to make the Internet more “civil,” though there are wildly divergent views on what that “more” should be. Others vigorously oppose such moderation, arguing that encouraging the large platforms to assert and ever-greater role as Internet speech police will cause all kinds of collateral damage, particularly to already marginalized communities. Notably missing from most of these discussions is a sense of context. Fact is, there’s another arena where intermediaries have been policing online speech for decades: copyright. Since at least 1998, online intermediaries in the US and abroad have taken down or filtered out billions of websites and links, often based on nothing more than mere allegations of infringement. Part of this is due to Section 512 of the Digital Mil...

A Consumer Privacy Hearing With No One Representing Consumers The Senate Commerce Committee hearing on consumer privacy this morning was exactly what we and other privacy advocates expected: a chorus of big tech industry voices, with no one representing smaller companies or consumers themselves. In his opening remarks, Senator Thune acknowledged the “angst” caused by the Committee’s decisions to convene an industry-only panel, and promised more hearings with more diverse voices. We look forward to a confirmed hearing date with a diverse panel of witnesses from academia, advocacy, and state consumer protection authorities. Today’s hearing included witnesses from AT&T, Apple, Amazon, Charter, Google, and Twitter. All of them confirmed their support for a federal law to preempt California’s Consumer Privacy Act. Many recited talking points about the workload required to comply with the “patchwork” of state laws that they anticipate. However, none were able to answer the ques...

Digital is disrupting every industry and the processes that run those.  As detailed in our previous blog “ Digital transformation and value creation for Oil and Gas at the IT/OT market convergence ”, oil and gas industry, also shipyards, are not immune to these developments. Digitalization enables better project design and execution with further benefits over the full asset lifecycle. A large portion of global oil and gas reserves are found offshore. To exploit these reserves, fixed platforms, semi-submersibles or floating production storage and offloading vessels (FPSOs) are employed. Shipyards have been for a long time the main contributor to the development of offshore oil and gas facilities, from vessels to transport hydrocarbons across the oceans to offshore rigs, FPSOs, platforms and other facilities. As oil and gas production moves towards deep-sea regions, harsher offshore environments and difficult-to-recover hydrocarbons, shipyards play a crucial role for providing cos...

One of my duties at Datacloud Europe 2018 was to chair a panel of leading colocation players discussing how data centers are evolving to meet shifting clients’ needs. Amongst the companies were technology leaders from Interxion, Green Mountain and Kao Data who laid out their approaches for meeting customer expectations. An overarching theme that surfaced in our discussion was flexible data center solutions – particularly by means of open compute (OCP). Colocation Customers Looking at OCP Options In a report “Customer Insight: Future-proofing your colocation business,” 451 Research conveyed the data point that 51% of customers surveyed said the availability of OCP-ready white space would make them more willing to use a colocation provider. A small but growing number of colocation providers have designated OCP-compliant white space. One company that has taken the rise of OCP very seriously is wholesale data center market entrant, Kao Data. Recently, they have been working to get the...

Technology has become incredibly prominent in our lives. Now, the need for power sources that don’t falter has become a universal requirement. One need only take a look at humanity’s dependence on a multitude of gadgets and appliances to understand the need for this backup source of power supply, so that they can understand just how important it is to ensure the continuous and uninterrupted distribution of power across multiple verticals at all times. In this context, a smart UPS system comes into play. Gauging the current level of power supply being provided and taking into account the possibility for any future outages means that the problems that might arise due to a power outage (irrespective of how brief it may be) can either be mitigated substantially or taken care of altogether. Thus, a reliable system of power management will be set in place that will make sure of it that any particular form of technology which mandates the need for a constant, unwavering source of power isn...

Technological applications are at an all-time high – anyone in today’s day-and-age knows exactly what we’re talking about when we make this statement. It’s genuinely amazing to witness the prevalence of modern technology and how it is affecting us in our day-to-day lives. This has reached a point where it has become close to impossible to even think about a world which isn’t technologically advanced. Facilitating such an environment has helped propel the notion of home automation becoming the norm in today’s day-and-age. However, to say that this form of technology will become universal in the coming years is an incredibly short-sighted statement to make – the fact of the matter is that there are still many forms of technology that need to become commonplace before one can even think that home automation can become a universally applicable form of technology. To meet these challenges, the concept of network connectivity can play a major role. Making sure that all the processes invol...

In this quickly evolving world of energy, it’s important that power distribution systems are designed to tackle any challenging applications that come along. For example, though wind power is estimated to supply up to 20% of global electricity by 2030 , turbines are an extremely harsh environment for power equipment to operate in. Another challenge arises as businesses continue to set aggressive growth goals in the face of tough competition. A global report by KPMG states manufacturing leaders are planning for “flexibility and agility to respond to increased (even unpredicted) demand and market disruptions.” This might require higher, as well as highly variable, production output from existing plants, placing even greater demands on power infrastructures. Meeting these new kinds of demands requires robust power distribution systems and components that can be specified to meet the exact performance requirements of each application. It also requires components that have the flexibility...

In a fierce global economy, every industry is focusing on reducing CAPEX while simultaneously increasing plant efficiency and productivity. Though these two goals might seem contradictory, technologies are emerging that can help. A good example is the new generation of electronic motor controllers (MCs) that are changing the way industry is using motors. In this post, we’ll see how these smart MCs can help reduce the total cost of ownership of a plant by impacting everything from electrical design to automation architecture and operations. Save money by saving space A simple way to reduce the cost of low voltage equipment is to use smaller electrical devices, which saves on the metal as well as the time to build it. New, more compact motor controllers allow for additional starters per column and less copper for the main power busbar, which is a key cost factor. With a trend toward compact electric devices, electrical panels now require less real estate, which can benefit restricted...