ALKHOBAR, 23 August — The Institute of Integrated Electrical Engineers, Eastern Region Chapter, Saudi Arabia (IIEE-ERCSA) held recently here a seminar workshop to discuss the harmful effect of computers and other electronic items in the power systems.
Entitled “Power Factor Correction and Harmonic Study,” the one-day seminar tackled the ill effect of computers and similar devices which has distortion — called harmonics — resulting to premature failure of many equipment and power outages in heavily affected systems.
With hi-tech computers, television sets, high powered stereo components, microwave ovens, and other modern technologies available everywhere, lives of so many people may have improved.
Engineer Cesar dela Cruz said that these electronic devices convert the alternating current to direct current, and the constant on and off switching of the equipment distorts the original frequency of these electronic items.
“This will result in overheating of the wires which may cause of melting the insulation and maybe causes fire, therefore, your circuit breaker will trip,” he said.
According to dela Cruz, the press relation officer of IIEE-ERCSA, the premature failure of an equipment shortens its service life. This is due to the prolonged exposure of the electronic items being switched on using an outsized cable wire which will cause nuisance tripping in the circuit breaker, he said.
Dela Cruz, who worked at the Project Management of Aramco in Dhahran, said that a proper study should be made on the profile or design of a building, be a house or an office, with proper size of cables and distribution equipment.
He said, most of the fires were due to short circuits because of wrong-size cable wirings installed in a building. People tend to stuff their rooms with a lot of electronic items, using them simultaneously without looking on the power capacity of that room, dela Cruz warned.
The IIEE-ERCSA, headed by its president Robert Mabulay of SCECO, is very active in promoting continuing professional education to the Filipino electrical engineers in this part of the Kingdom.
Just recently, they also held a technical seminar on Primavera Software at the Fluor Arabia building in Alkhobar.