Happy
Tax Time again,
For our New
Zealand clients, please get ready to send your taxes in to the
government, this year put a bow on them and say thank you. We
are very lucky to live in a relatively peaceful & happy country
down here in the South Pacific.
Some
Local News.
Manasi Gaonkar
is getting married in April and is taking sometime out of life
to travel with her husband.
Dhara Pandya
is back from here extended leave and is ready for action on April
7th.
Saera Moala
is off to Tonga, taking a youth group over in April. She is coming
back ( we hope )
Some
observations
We
are finding a continuing increase in sales as the year progresses.
The
manufacturers list, range and types of products we are selling,
is still expanding due to customer requests. Thank you, it keeps
us on our toes.
Comms
and Wireless lead the way, however traditional technologies are
strong, especailly power products.
Many
companies are involved in expansion of production and upgrades
or improvements.
It
is a great time to think about efficiencies and get any slack
time used up in doing that sort of work.
A
New Service
We
are finding many small start up companies are having difficulty
exposing their products to the market.
For
a new startup company with their first product line, it is imperative
they can reach users of these types of products.
MasTec
is now offering to expose new products from our clients to all
the other clients we have.
In
many cases these start up companies are also not in a position
to act as a distributor of their products due to size and cost.
MasTec is offering to be that distributor and also to assist
in finding other distribution networks in the 28 countires we
talk to each month.
So
if you are in one of the 28 countries, and you have a new product
let MasTec know and we will expose it to our 15,000 readers and
1000 integrators, dealers, and system builders.
Also
if you are in one of the 28 countries, and a product does catches
your eye from this section and you have a ready market for the
products, let MasTec know and we can get an agreement formalisd
with you.
 Our first exposure this
month is a New Zealand company that is releasing:-
Smart,
High End, High Power Battery Chargers.
These
chargers come in a slick aluminium box or for special work, can
be custom racked.
They
are small, up to 94% efficient, PF of 1, and use Telco rectifier
sets up the front end for high power and great reliability.
Two
models 24VDC 1500watt and 48 VDC 1800 watt units.
These
can be paralleled for more current or seriesed to make more volts
or both.
Large
system natural just evolve to three phase power also.
They
are three stage chargers ( boost, absortion and float )
And
the price is right
More
products will follow these releases shortly.
Designed
and built to the highest international standards also.
We
are starting a new page for these special promotions. More inside
the newsletter.
I am interested in this
|
Some
Interesting Highlights for this month are:-
And
next our standard new product announcements.
 Digi's
new iDigi DIA software
Usually we let ADAM lead the way, but this month
we have the most exciting wireless news for several years.
Hardware Products are one thing, they are usually
easier to design and build.
But software that allows building seamless wireless
systems from end point transducer, through a mesh or point to
point wireless network, gateway, corporate networks, up links
of more wireless like GPRS or 3G back to servers is a Show Stopper.
Add M2M Hosting and you have a system integrators
dream.
Who will use this?
First customer was a 60,000 house utility in Texas
doing AMR ( Automatic Meter Reading ) and load shedding in each
house.
Link
|
MasTec
Staff Contacts :-
Please send Rob Maskell in Marketing
any updates on company details, any new staff members etc
Please contact our staff for
any products, Loyal, Saera, Dhara, Manasi are always pleased
to help
Alternative Power Research
As you may be aware, MasTec has
had an Alternative Power Research Project running now for about
2 years.
One of the products that uses
most of the power at a remote living site is refrigeration. During
the last two years there has been three refrig systems trialed
with various degrees of success.
Recently a new Pure Sinewave
Inverter was installed to drive one of these refrig systems -
an 85 watt unit. The new inverter allows the adjusting of the
output voltage and frequency.
A trial was set up and some amazing
results were observed.
The Refrig was speced as a 230
VAC 50 HZ system.
With the Inverter set at this
230 VAC 50 HZ, the Refrig drew around 2000 watts to start and
rapidly settled down to about 100 watts and then slowly over
the cycle dropping to 85 watts and then switch off as it reached
terminal temperature.
However, at 240 VAC which is
Australian voltages the power usage went up considerably, see
the chart below.
Also at 200 VAC the power usage
dropped considerably.
Changing the frequency also changed
the power usage but it was decided to run at 50HZ for these tests
as the compressor may be overheated running 16% faster at 60
HZ.
These results were expected of
course but not to the extent that was measured. These readings
are averages over many cycles.
| VAC Out |
Frequency |
Power Start (approx) |
Power Run |
Power Terminal |
Cycle Time |
| 240VAC |
50HZ |
2000 watts |
120watts |
95watts |
Same |
| 230VAC |
50HZ |
2000 watts |
100watts |
85watts |
Same |
| 220VAC |
50HZ |
2000 watts |
95watts |
80watts |
Same |
| 200VAC |
50HZ |
2000 watts |
85watts |
65watts |
Same |
These readings are the power
being consumed by the inverter, not being produced by the inverter.
It was easier to do DC reading than AC readings. Also note this
- Take out the efficiency of the inverter and the results are
more amazing.
Some thoughts --
During the testing, the feeling
was that the refrig might stall at 200VAC and cause damage but
after observing dozens of starts, the motor never stalled, it
snapped to start rapidly with about the same surge in rush Amps
as the other voltages tested.
The cycle times were approx the
same length - within 5%. These cycle times varied according to
the Refrig usage etc.
A 23% saving of energy was amazing
to see when running at 200 VAC over the 230 VAC setting. Needless
to say it is still on 200VAC.
It is hard to quantify and explain
these results without further monitoring which is planned later
in the year when a bigger research facility is established.
Questions that need answering
--
Is it the Refrig
getting more efficient or the inverter or is it both??? -- as
the VAC is switched down.
However, if you have a refrig
system on alternative power, get a clamp meter and do some readings
and see if you can adjust your inverter also -- Do you get the
same results as our work.
Maybe a refrig engineer can explain
the results, as it seems a huge improvement in the use of precious
remote power.
Last point, if you are lucky
enough to have a Quasi wave and a Pure Sinewave inverter, do
some trials with them. My results showed the Quasi used a large
amount more power than the Sinewave to do the same job, typically
30% more. Also the Refrig sounded sweeter on the Pure Sinewave
inverter.
Wireless Primer
Now th eguys at B&B are pretty
switched on cookies and they just released this excellent info
on wirless, I believe should be available to all. It is public
domain ut still I want to acknowledge them as the writers and
authors to the public domain.
They have blogged it -- so happy
reading and using.
The link for the Blog
Just scroll down a bit and you
will hit this excellent work.
Some other important
and useful links
Rabbit Forum - Rabbit
Rabbit Appnotes - Rabbit
Rabbit Webinars - Rabbit
Rabbit White Papers - Rabbit
Rabbit Documentation - Rabbit
Rabbit Ask Larry Column - Rabbit
Rabbit New Downloads and C math code examples etc - Rabbit
Medical
- Anatomy
Rabbit
MiniCore 5700 - Rabbit