Archive for May, 2009
are and maintenance in many cases is forgotten until the battery fails to start your car. It only takes a small amount of care and maintenance to prevent the battery from failing you when you need it the most. Cold weather is the worst time to have a dead battery, but then cold weather is the hardest on your battery. By performing regular care and maintenance on your battery year round you should be able to catch those batteries before cold weather sets in and the before the battery leaves you stranded in four feet of snow and ice.
Testing and taking care of the maintenance on your battery only requires a little bit of time and a small amount of tools. If you only perform the maintenance and care your battery needs once a year, make that once a year in the fall. Fall is a great time of year to putter around outside, so you might as well putter around with the battery in your vehicle.
It is always recommended before you do anything with your battery to wear eye protection and keep open flames away from the battery. This means no smoking. Batteries produce a hydrogen gas, which is highly flammable and because batteries contain sulfuric acid, you want to do what you can to protect your eyes from sulfuric acid getting in them. If you get sulfuric acid on your skin, mix baking soda and water and apply to the area. This will neutralize the acid and prevent additional damage or burns to your skin.
You will want to inspect the battery for any obvious problems. A broken alternator belt, a dirty or wet battery, corroded or swollen cables, corroded terminals, or a leaking or damaged battery case could cause your battery to fail. Clean, repair or replace any of the items listed. Distilled water should be used replenish the water level of the battery.
Battery testing doesn?t have to be so hard, and you don?t have to be a rocket scientist to find out whether or not you have a good battery. You do need to make sure your battery is performing, as it should, so you don?t get stuck when you need it the most. There are so many testers on the market and so many different types of testing methods, sometimes it can get quite confusing. Always use a proven method of testing.
By: Elliott Turner
Your mileage has certainly become a much more interesting topic in recent times. This is not because folks have just developed a new love for auto mechanics; it has to do with how much of our monthly spend goes to gas. The price of gas is still near all time highs and does not show any signs of dropping low enough to really make a difference. I will give you a few tips that will help you maximize your gas mileage.
You can get better gas mileage by changing your oil at regular intervals. If you’ve been putting off this important chore indefinitely you’ve built a drain on your finances without knowing. Time is money. But the time spent on changing your oil is saved at the gas station. Always remember what you’re losing otherwise. This will motivate you to do your oils as frequently as necessary.
The next thing that can help you improve your mileage is the attention you give to your tires. The condition of your tires affects your fuel use. Under inflated tires lower your gas mileage by 0.4 for every one pound of drop in pressure of all four tires. This means that if you’re under inflated by as much as 5 pounds you are losing as much as 2% in your fuel economy.
Still on tires, if your tires are not properly aligned they will drag and not roll freely. This also will increase fuel consumption. So, it’s a good idea to ensure your tires are properly aligned. Generally make sure your tires have all the care they require. You’ll get better mileage for that.
The more load you have on your car, the less your gas mileage. This means that you must get rid of stuff that are of no practical use to you on a drive. Check your trunk, you’ll be surprised how much has accumulated over time. Remove them and keep only the essentials.
A warm engine saves more fuel than a cool engine. How can you take advantage of this fact? Simple. Try as much as possible to combine every bit of activity that involves driving around into one or less drives. You can work out mutual arrangements with friends that will help you maximize this option.
There are features you can use on the highway to improve your gas mileage. They are the cruise control and the overdrive. The first helps you maintain your speed while the other provides an extra gear for high speeds.
Driving at speeds above 60km/h lower you gas mileage. So drive at slower speeds wherever you can.
Go ahead and make sure you try all these tips and you’ll improve your gas mileage considerably.
By: Gregg Hall
Power loss incidents, which amount in USA to $80 billion annually, cause tremendous damages to computers and data, in industry, communication and data centers.Power failures are markedly related to season, occurring mainly due to transformer failures, standby generator starting troubles and underground cable malfunctions, all victims of poor maintenance that could be avoided.
Forty two major worldwide Power Failure reported incidents were analyzed by UPSonNet. All occurred during February 2009, each affecting thousands up to hundreds of thousands people. The study results indicate that most failures are due to defective equipment that failed in Stormy Weather. Proper preventive maintenance could have eliminated most defects and the associated power failures.
Normally, during the dry period, contamination which includes electrically conductive materials is collected on power line insulators. Rains and storms close the electric path causing shorts and arcs, tripping line breakers. Sometimes utility poles catch fire due to the electric arcs.
Salt is used in some areas as part of winter road treatment, increasing the amount of contamination spread by road vehicles kicking up salt from the roadway. This creates more potential for electric arcs near freeways and major roads.
Trees are also a leading cause of power failures in winter. Winds and snow cause trees to fall. The falling trees cut power lines. Some power lines create electric shorts and arcs between adjacent power lines or from power lines to ground.
Lack of rain may affect power supply in places where considerable amount of power is generated by hydropower. Kathmandu is now seeing severe power cuts, with no rain in the past few months and decreasing water level in rivers feeding the hydropower plants.
Excessive heat, as experienced in Australia in February, overloads electricity supply due to tremendous growth in air conditioning, thus tripping line breakers.
Natural causes reported as air contamination, trees, ice, no rain, as well as any incident reported as transmission line failure, which may or may not refer to natural causes, form together only thirty five percents of total power loss incidents. Defective equipment is responsible for forty six percent of power loss incidents and is the main reason for power losses. Seven percent of outages occurred due to automotive accidents. The reason of additional twelve percent is unclear.
Although most installations are equipped with Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) systems, no single UPS or its battery failure was reported. In some cases the power failure occurred after depletion of UPS batteries.
Till late eighties, year by year, the arrival of first autumn storm was accompanied by collapsing of defective UPS systems and particularly worn out backup batteries. No UPS Company had enough staff, or enough batteries to deal with all irate calls from customers. The chaos stopped when microprocessor based UPS control was introduced in early nineties, enabling automatic testing of UPS systems including batteries, by performing periodic power outage simulation exercises. The exercising enabled detection of defective systems, correction of the UPS and replacement of defective and weak batteries. All these preventive actions were performed when mains power was still available, before the stormy weather season.
Equipment malfunction diagnosis indicates that nature is not to be blamed. Similarly to the described initial experience with UPS sytems, most of the studied power equipment, which failed during storms was revealed to be already defective, and couldn’t perform within its designed limits. Lightning and switching voltages generated in the grid are generally attenuated and clamped to the insulation levels of line isolators and surge protective devices. Healthy transformers and cables should be able to withstand these voltage levels, and backup generators should start when needed.
Performance of proper preventive maintenance can solve most of power failure problems. Simple, cost effective monitors based on technologies such as Partial Discharge (PD) and Infrared tomography are able to detect transformer defects, and allow scheduling corrective actions in time. Power outage simulation exercising can reveal generator’s starting problems. PD methods, Power Factor measurements, as well as other monitoring methods, offered by test instruments manufacturers, can alarm before the stormy season, about defective underground cables, which require treatment.
UPSonNet study reveals that most power outages occur in stormy season, mainly because of defective equipment, which fails in harsh environment. Such outages, do not happen due to acts of God but due to negligence of humans, and can be avoided by proper maintenance service. Regular maintenance schedule, exercising and monitoring can foresee possible problems, which can be solved before the storms come.
Forty two major worldwide Power Failure reported incidents were analyzed by UPSonNet. All occurred during February 2009, each affecting thousands up to hundreds of thousands people. The study results indicate that most failures are due to defective equipment that failed in Stormy Weather. Proper preventive maintenance could have eliminated most defects and the associated power failures.
Normally, during the dry period, contamination which includes electrically conductive materials is collected on power line insulators. Rains and storms close the electric path causing shorts and arcs, tripping line breakers. Sometimes utility poles catch fire due to the electric arcs.
Salt is used in some areas as part of winter road treatment, increasing the amount of contamination spread by road vehicles kicking up salt from the roadway. This creates more potential for electric arcs near freeways and major roads.
Trees are also a leading cause of power failures in winter. Winds and snow cause trees to fall. The falling trees cut power lines. Some power lines create electric shorts and arcs between adjacent power lines or from power lines to ground.
Lack of rain may affect power supply in places where considerable amount of power is generated by hydropower. Kathmandu is now seeing severe power cuts, with no rain in the past few months and decreasing water level in rivers feeding the hydropower plants.
Excessive heat, as experienced in Australia in February, overloads electricity supply due to tremendous growth in air conditioning, thus tripping line breakers.
Natural causes reported as air contamination, trees, ice, no rain, as well as any incident reported as transmission line failure, which may or may not refer to natural causes, form together only thirty five percents of total power loss incidents. Defective equipment is responsible for forty six percent of power loss incidents and is the main reason for power losses. Seven percent of outages occurred due to automotive accidents. The reason of additional twelve percent is unclear.
Although most installations are equipped with Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) systems, no single UPS or its battery failure was reported. In some cases the power failure occurred after depletion of UPS batteries.
Till late eighties, year by year, the arrival of first autumn storm was accompanied by collapsing of defective UPS systems and particularly worn out backup batteries. No UPS Company had enough staff, or enough batteries to deal with all irate calls from customers. The chaos stopped when microprocessor based UPS control was introduced in early nineties, enabling automatic testing of UPS systems including batteries, by performing periodic power outage simulation exercises. The exercising enabled detection of defective systems, correction of the UPS and replacement of defective and weak batteries. All these preventive actions were performed when mains power was still available, before the stormy weather season.
Equipment malfunction diagnosis indicates that nature is not to be blamed. Similarly to the described initial experience with UPS sytems, most of the studied power equipment, which failed during storms was revealed to be already defective, and couldn’t perform within its designed limits. Lightning and switching voltages generated in the grid are generally attenuated and clamped to the insulation levels of line isolators and surge protective devices. Healthy transformers and cables should be able to withstand these voltage levels, and backup generators should start when needed.
Performance of proper preventive maintenance can solve most of power failure problems. Simple, cost effective monitors based on technologies such as Partial Discharge (PD) and Infrared tomography are able to detect transformer defects, and allow scheduling corrective actions in time. Power outage simulation exercising can reveal generator’s starting problems. PD methods, Power Factor measurements, as well as other monitoring methods, offered by test instruments manufacturers, can alarm before the stormy season, about defective underground cables, which require treatment.
For additional information about overcoming outages in stormy weather, see Study Results.
By: Meir portnoy