New director appointed at power supply specialist

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Aug 24, 2001

Advance-Galatrek has just appointed Dean Hammond to the role of Director of International Sales, as the company aims at the increasingly important Middle/Far Eastern and African markets

Advance-Galatrek has just appointed Dean Hammond to the role of Director of International Sales.

Dean has been with the Company since 1965 and, prior to this latest promotion, was International Sales Manager for the organisation.

Dean's new role signals an intention by the Company to capitalise on the increasing importance of Middle Eastern, Far Eastern, African and Third World countries as being valuable export markets.

In particular, countries in these regions tend to suffer proportionately higher incidents of variable power quality than European and North American locations.

Variations in the quality of power supplied can include an increased number of mains outages and, equally importantly, poor quality mains delivery, frequently subject to sags, surges and brownouts.

Because poor quality domestic supplies are as much a feature of these regions as variable commercial and industrial mains power, Advance-Galatrek recommends use of Automatic Voltage Stabilisers (AVS), even in non-commercial environments.

In many countries, mains voltage criteria are often so variable that it becomes impossible for householders to successfully operate even the most basic domestic appliances.

For these situations, use of an AVS is an almost essential requirement for anyone wishing to operate a refrigerator, air conditioning unit or television.

Similarly, because power quality issues can exist up to 90% of the time, Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) are generally considered essential for any computer or telecoms applications.

This is particularly true for the mobile communications installations that are becoming increasingly popular because of the prohibitive infrastructure costs of installing landlines over long distances.

In these circumstances, UPS installations can provide much needed extra runtime capabilities, pending restoration of the mains power or , alternatively, while auxiliary generators power up.

Also essential for telecoms applications in these regions is the installation of Transient Voltage Surge Suppressors (TVSS).

These devices can protect valuable and sensitive equipment from damage or destruction by voltage surges in the mains power supply, or external transients such as lightning strikes.

By their very nature, mobile communications base stations are often sited in exposed areas or on higher ground.

This makes them particularly vulnerable to damage by lightning, and consequent component failure.

The installation of TVSS devices of appropriate specification allows the energy generated by a transient waveform to be dissipated before it can cause damage to sensitive and costly equipment.

According to Dean Hammond, his new role will allow him to build even further on the already strong customer base that the Company enjoys in these key markets.

'Because of the generally poor levels of power quality inherent in these regions, Advance-Galatrek believes that it has a major role to play in the provision of power protection and power quality management.

Our range of AVS, UPS and TVSS products serves to provide an essential service to industrial and commercial installations, as well as enabling domestic users to take advantage of many of the household products that we in the western world take for granted,' he said.