Not long after I first arrived here in Australia, I met an architect who told me that he didn’t want light switches to be visible in homes. When I asked him why, he simply said: “Because they’re ugly.” I suspect such an attitude is not uncommon amongst many architects, and even some home owners, given the universal use of basic white switch plates and GPOs in this country.

Numerous reports from around the world indicate that around 40% of the world’s energy is used in buildings, so taking the lead in energy efficiency in buildings is a key area to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This therefore, represents tremendous opportunities for the electrical industry to assist in reducing emissions, as well as operating costs, for their clients.

All electronics in an organisation - from desktops to data centres - require continuous, clean power. Anything less puts businesses at risk of data corruption, equipment damage and unplanned downtime. Most organisations meet this requirement by having a central UPS that serves an entire building/data centre, or distributed UPSs placed closer to the equipment being protected, or both.

A recent survey of 400 CEOs of Australian companies has identified skills shortages as a major challenge facing business.

New legislation requiring the disclosure of buildings’ energy ratings means the electrical industry will play an even more important role on the performance of buildings.

Standards Australia provides an update on its activities in the continuing development of smart grid standards for Australia.

A recent US report states that important factors such as climate change, emerging renewable technologies, carbon costs and volatile fossil-fuel prices are the driving forces behind new business models in the electrical industry in the 21st century.

The city of Brisbane’s 6.8 km long Clem Jones Tunnel, known as ‘CLEM 7’, is one of the largest infrastructure projects ever to be undertaken in the state of Queensland. Built as a solution to Brisbane’s inner-city traffic gridlock, the tunnel has been built under the Brisbane River and connects the north- and south-bound traffic, has five traffic connection points, and a sixth connection to the Airport Link is planned for completion in 2012.

NECA has been instrumental in a Fair Work Australia decision to enable NSW businesses to continue to choose between two types of apprenticeships in the electrical industry.

A recently built, four-storey home in Melbourne’s prestigious Toorak was an obvious candidate for home automation. To cope with the home’s complexity and sophistication, five separate Clipsal C-Bus networks were installed to control 29 motorised blinds, motorised plasma-lifts, irrigation, swimming pool, over 600 light fittings, motion sensors and colour-changing LED lighting.

NECA has called on the government to release details on the insulation installation safety inspection figures or to inspect all of the installations in the country.

Improving the energy efficiencies of industrial plants can be enhanced through proper monitoring of the energy consumed by plant and equipment.

Maser has successfully completed the supply of instrumentation, thermocouple and process control cables that were required for a major $300m upgrade to a large manufacturing facility in southern New South Wales.

Structured cabling systems have become ubiquitous in commercial and industrial buildings and facilities around the world in recent decades. At the same time, Internet Protocol has become the norm for communicating over this infrastructure. While their fundamental applications were initially for voice and data systems, many other building services applications, such as video surveillance, are emerging on these platforms to take advantage of their simplicity to deploy and operationally integrate.

It’s hard to imagine the terms ‘Swiss cheese’ and ‘halogen downlights’ being used coherently in the same sentence - ordinarily the two have nothing in common with each other. But the subject of this article makes an exception. The common practice of mass installations of halogen downlights in homes and businesses is effectively turning ceilings into ‘Swiss cheese’.