Category Archives: News

BS7671 18th edition Amendment 2 – now encompasses safety services

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Written by Mark Lloyd, Senior Product Manager- Power Supplies & Surge Protection

The current 18th edition version of BS7671, more commonly known as the wiring regs has been in force since January 2019, so a little over 3 years. I wrote a blog around the time predicting that the issue of surge protection would become much more of a hot topic and thankfully that has proved to be the case.

The list of instances where surge protection needs to be used was fairly clear and has resulted in surge protection being installed more routinely in domestic, commercial and industrial applications.

As a reminder the current 18th edition states: 

Protection against transient over-voltages shall be provided where the consequence caused by over voltage could:

i. Result in serious injury to, or loss of, human life
ii. Result in interruption of public services and/or damage cultural heritage
iii. Result in interruption of commercial or industrial activity
iv. Affect a large number of co-located individuals”

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Keep up to date with product changes

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Written by Darren Hack, Distribution Manager

I recently passed 16 years with Phoenix Contact and as you can imagine there have been a lot of changes within that time.  The waistline has expanded, the hairline is fighting a losing battle, at least my football team continue to be frustratingly average! 

However we are here to talk about the changes at Phoenix Contact, and specifically with our products.  In this area there are always plenty of changes, something you would expect from a company that prides itself on innovations!  An example being our Quint power supplies, where we are currently on our 4th generation- a PSU you can now program using NFC!   In addition to technical innovations there are also many changes made to products to improve design, streamline manufacturing processes and the additions of approvals.

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The Future is Electric

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Written by Duncan Nicol

For thousands of years we have relied on carbon fuels to power our world and for a long time, it made a lot of sense. Carbon fuels such as coal and oil were easy to get to and therefore a cheap source of fuel and energy dense. As demand increased they became harder to find and then, of course, the environmental impact became widely known, but by then we were so very dependent on them. Continue reading

Is your power supply ready for the Industrial Internet of Things? The QUINT4 DC UPS sure is.

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Written by Mark Lloyd

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In 2004, we released our first DC UPS, the first generation QUINT-UPS, which is still in use and purchased today.

Then in 2011, we released the QUINT UPS-IQ, which for the first time allowed some monitoring of the connected battery to see such things as battery status, battery lifetime, and remaining runtime. With this generation of UPS it is possible to pass this info up to higher level controls but requires additional hardware.

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What’s new for Smart Networks…

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Written by Gareth Chamberlain

For the last two weeks, we have been busy. The old technical wall has been demolished and a new wall has been constructed in its place. Why? You might ask. Not only do we update the demonstration wall every so often to show new products, we also thought this time it would be more suited to be more than just a showroom. So we decided to create the Smart Networks wall (cue unveiling music). This allows us to give more of a service towards yourself and the needs of an application.

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What has surge protection got to do with safety?

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Written by Mark Lloyd and Andy Maskell

Anything that increases the reliability of your safety circuit has to be a good thing…..

In fact, it is a basic requirement when using safety relays or Safe PLCs that the outputs are protected against overcurrent and overvoltage to prevent dangerous failures.

In the case of a safety relay output, this may be in the form of a welded relay contact for example.

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