electricity

Informative and very insightfu

Este libro hace una descripción de las máquinas eléctricas, de manera tal de que se puedan modelar para poder estudiar la estabilidad de la máquina y del sistema en el cual está funcionando.Es una herramienta para el ingeniero, porque cada vez necesita más estudiar la dinámica del sistema, para poder aprovechar al máximo cada elemento.

A good introduction to some of the important issues in electric utility deregulation. Has a short history of the electric utility industry and the laws & regulations that have brought the industry to where it is today. Outlines several of the possible market models that an electric utility market could take as it enters deregulation. Issues identified are still being played out in the California utilities market. Written at a level for the general public outside of the utility industry.

The methods of Zbus matrix calculation described in this book is now of historical interests only. These methodologies have been replaced by sparse Ybus techniques.

This book is not for begninners, but for someone who already knows the basic stuff. The material is presented in a very ad-hoc manner. The chapters and subsections do not follow the standard "say what you are going to say - say - and say what you said" format. New concepts are thrown at you with no lead or introduction. But the material is there. So it is a good reference book. This book can use a good editor.

I use this book mostly for referencing command syntax. Most people don't hand enter Spice netlists anymore, but this book is still very useful if you want to no why and how things work behind the scenes. I would have liked more information about advanced device modeling.

i am a mechanical engineer working for the power generation industry. as one grows up in professional line, the responsibility also grows. as a mechanocal engineer i have been always reluctant to see the electrical aspect of the power generation until one day i have to take important decision concerning the electrical aspect of the power plant. this hand book came to my great help & stisfaction and took me through most of the electrical engg aspects related to power generation in a very very simple way. Topics like the harmonics, selection and imporatntace of many basic electrical components have been very well covered.i am glad to go through such a book. i would imagine such hand book is a must for practicing power engineers.

The main point of this book is a relatively simple model for the spot price of power based on stochastic supply and demand. The rationale for the model is presented along with description of an estimation procedure. Due to the lack of data the model is not fully estimated, which makes the whole exercise rather academic. that's the valuable 20 pages. the rest, imho, is filler

There is one error in this book that could be life threatening and I am not trying to be sensationalistic!

The authors talk about the various electrical generation and distribution systems found in boats and they mention a system known as the "ungrounded" system. They describe this system as having the live wires (hot and neutral) "float above" ground. This system (they don't mention) employs a generator wound in a delta configuration, that is, without a ground. They say that the beauty of this system is that if you touch a hot wire, rather than the current travelling through your body to ground, the current "prefers" to travel back to the source of power (that is the generator). So, according to the authors, you can touch all the live wires you want and not get shocked. This is ABSOLUTELY false. I have been a marine electrician for 15 years, the first ten years of which I worked on ships with exactly this wiring configuration. Electrical current ALWAYS travels to ground when it can. I have been shocked pretty hard on a couple of occasions on ships with the very system these guys are talking about. (...)

I reread that paragraph about 12 times (no exagerration) just to make sure that they were saying what I thought they were saying and even showed it to my boss, but common sense and simple math prove they are wrong. (...)

Believe it or not, this book is really good, other than this fact and the fact that the ABYC is a little more picky these days than it was when this book was written (for instance, now the standard for bonding wire is #6 AWG, not #8 AWG as this book states).

I actually recommend this book. The reason is this: Very, very few people will ever actually be on a boat that has a delta wound generator and an ungrounded distribution system (they are very rare outside of military applications) and those that will, will probably not be bold enough to stick their fingers in a hot panel. Most non-electricians are scared to put their fingers in a DEAD (de-energized) panel!

It was irresponsible of the Miller and Maloney to write such an obviously false and potential dangerous description of delta systems, but if you rip that page out of this book, you are left with a pretty darn good beginner's guide. Anything on the subject by Nigel Calder is better than this book, but then again Calder overestimates the intelligence of his readers, whereas these guys have a very arm-around-the-shoulder writing technique. Another good thing about this book is that they give a great description of gasoline engine ignition systems, whereas Calder (being the diesel mechanic that he is) stays well away from spark plugs. Miller and Maloney's description of ignition systems is very well written and informative. I literally knew nothing about ignition systems (outside of the very basics) before I read this book, and now there is hardly an ignition problem I can't solve.

Overall, I found that this book is usable, but sloppily written and sloppily produced. Some of examples of this sloppiness:

1) The authors are very sloppy with their units; they derive equations like "v = 2 * i", where "v" is a voltage and "i" is a current, and then substitute something like "i = 2 amps" into the equation and get "v = 4 volts". What happened to the units?! They should have written something like "v = (2 volts/amp) * i", because an amp is not equal to a volt!!! The author of my physics textbook was very careful in making sure all his equations were dimensionally-correct: why couldn't Dorf & Svoboda, in their 6th ed, have exercised a little more care? This is especially annoying when dealing with units like nanofarads and milliamps, because you have to make sure than the powers-of-ten work out right.

2) The circuit diagrams for the exercises are located in a confusing manner, so that it is easy, for example, to mistakenly use Figure P5.4.2 for exercise #5.4-3, especially since the wrong figure is right next to the exercise and the correct figure is in the location farthest away from it on the page (i.e., the exercise text on the bottom of the first column and the diagram is on the top of the next column). Putting the diagram next to the exercise and separating consecutive exercises with a horizontal line would have helped a lot here.

3) The authors use the notation "dv(0)/dt" to mean the rate-of-change of v(t) with respect to time, evaluated at t=0. However, this is easily misinterpreted to mean the rate-of-change of v(0) with respect to time, which is identically zero, because v(0) is a constant. Why don't they just use the standard mathematical notation "v'(0)" (where the single-quote is supposed to be the PRIME symbol), which is less bulky and less ambiguous?

4) Near the beginning of the book, the author integrates power from negative infinity to time t, and says that the value of this integral is the energy absorbed by the resistor. What?! How do you define what the power of the resistor was at time t = 900 trillion years ago? According the current scientific belief, the universe itself didn't even exist 900 trillion years ago, never mind the resistor. And even ignoring the physical universe, their improper integral isn't even defined unless p(t) is a decaying exponential or something else whose integral converges. So why not just integrate from time t_0 instead of from negative infinity?

Note: To do well in a course using this book, you should have taken or be currently taking a course in Dif. Eqn. & Lin. Alg., because this book requires you to know this material but presents it in a manner designed to confuse even those who already know it well.

This book is the most useless text that could be used in a first year electric circuits course. As the other reviewers have pointed out, the examples do not relate to the material which has been covered in the chapter. The extensive use of calculus in my opinion is also not necessary, and is the work of a complete academic. The idea of a first year circuits class is to teach the student methods of basic circuit analysis and how circuits can relate to the real world. If you really want to learn how circuits work I highly reccomend that you do not waste your time with this book. I must also like to point out that some other reviewers have slandered reviews such as mine. More specifically, these individuals appear to think that only "simple minded morons" or "dumb jocks" share the same opinion as mine towads this book. To prove these individuals wrong, I happen to be an Electrical Engineer and an Electronics Technician - and I still think that this book is for complete academics who have no respect for the educational benefit of the reader.

It's a mixed book. The exposition is fairly clear with plenty of worked examples and additional problems with answers. This is particularly good for people teaching themselves the material who need lots of practice and can't go to their TA's for help.

The book does use some calculus, but not an unreasonable amount. Some material is easier to understand given the proper mathematical tools and I believe that most of the author's use of calculus in the text is appropriate. There are a couple of exercises that require integration by parts, which I do not consider reasonable. There are also a couple of exercises that result in large, ugly polynomials to be simplified. Perhaps there are ways to avoid these given a cleverer approach than mine. Overall the math isn't excessive, the explanations are clear and there are only a few "What the %*@&!#! are you talking about?!?" moments.

The authors do appear to have been somewhat sloppy about proofreading their text and there are errors not in the official errata sheet. Some are small, like the inductor that mistakenly got assigned a resistor symbol. Some are more serious, like the inductor value that was off by a factor of 10 in one of the excercises. And of course there is the statement on page 8 of the sixth edition that says that the Internet was established in 1995. I guess that this must have been what Al Gore was talking about.

Oh and beware the "Electric Circuit Study Applets." I did finally get them to work, although the process was quite painful. There is no CD included with the book. The reader is required to go to the website, type in a access key, register and so on. The applets are very large java files that take a long time to download. My browser kept dying halfway through the process and it took many tries before the entire process worked. I still haven't managed to get the worked examples pdf file to load properly.