Electrical News

Despite being one of the most challenging rail projects of recent times, High Speed 1 - the 68 mile link from the Channel Tunnel to London previously known as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link - is on schedule to come into full passenger service on 14 November 2007

The Power Supply Upgrade (PSU) project carried out by Network Rail over the past three or four years has truly been on a grand scale. It was the largest electrical supply project in Europe at the time and the biggest electrification project in Britain’s railways for well over fifty years, costing over 500 million pounds. More importantly, it has been considered a resounding success.

The use of the 3M Cold Shrink as part of WCML’s auto transformer feeding system is expected to allow Network Rail a saving of £3 million compared to traditional methods.

The Olympics is one of the biggest and most exciting construction projects that the UK has seen for many decades. Moreover, the Olympics are going to require many miles of new power cables to be laid, both permanently and temporarily, as well as the installation of hundreds of power sub-stations. For the electrical power industry, the Olympics are both an opportunity and a challenge.

The need to maintain and extend the vast network of underground cables and joints still represents one of the biggest areas of investment made by power utilities today. It is also a very complex area, meaning that while engineering staff can take years to understand all the issues, it often seems an impenetrable topic for utility management.

Northern Ireland Electricity (NIE) has placed an order for 2972 3M Cold Shrink medium voltage cable terminations, to be installed over 2006 and 2007. 3M Cold Shrink was chosen due to its use of ‘cold applied’ technology and because the products provide simple and consistent quality of installation.

At 3M, we are constantly striving to improve our customer service both to our distribution network and our end-users. With new technology and feedback from our clients, we have incorporated many new features into the new site including an online product catalogue, 'find a product' feature and industry standard/compliance information.

In the world of construction, building an oil platform has to be one of the most demanding and complex projects imaginable. After all, it is comparable to building a mini ‘town’, one that is sitting in the middle of an often inhospitable sea. Everything that is needed to ensure the smooth running of the site has to be carefully thought out in advance and transported across the water, including installation of a high voltage electrical system to power the platform.