The Australian Industry Group has welcomed the statistics recently released by the federal government on the increase in trade apprenticeships around the country.

The pressure to provide a safe working environment and reduce safety incidents is well known to the electrical industry. However, few organisations in the recruitment process seek to identify the individuals who are most likely to cause safety incidents, preferring to focus on managing the work environment.

The commercial renewable power-generation market has received a huge injection of faith with the Australian Greens’ rise to power in the recent federal election. This emergence of ‘green’ policy muscle, combined with the growing pressure on a carbon price, offers the greatest opportunities yet to the commercial power-generation industry to succeed by going green.

The electrical industry has been under pressure from both the community and government regulators in recent years to produce more and more energy-efficient products in order to contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Measuring low resistance is an important electrical test because it helps identify components where the resistance has exceeded acceptable values, threatening several potential negative outcomes. These could include overheating, energy loss, protective fault device malfunction, poor grounding and catastrophic failure during power surges. Test results can be used to identify changes caused by fatigue, corrosion, vibration, temperature or other conditions that may occur at the site.

An electrical safety investigation prompted by the fatalities in the federal insulation scheme has found 15 people are killed and 300 hospitalised each year as a result of preventable electrical accidents in Australian homes.

Australian Industry Group has lodged three Fair Work appeals recently in an endeavour to preserve workplace flexibility.

Recent market research indicates that the optical networking market is growing, projected to reach US$20 billion globally by 2015.

Blade Network Technologies, a data centre ethernet switching company, has implemented Fanfare’s test automation product, iTest, to meet its increasing product development and time-to-market goals. Blade has saved approximately $500,000 in resource and equipment costs, sanity build times and time to market since implementing iTest.

A recent survey of 2700 Australian households has identified that consumers need help from the electrical industry to better understand the benefits of energy efficiency.

The Italian Bilingual School (IBS), located in Sydney’s inner western suburb of Leichhardt, upgraded its teaching facilities earlier this year, with its top priorities being to improve the learning environment and comfort of students, as well as reducing energy consumption. Robert Ruggeri, principal of the school, turned to HPM Legrand, and added BTicino sound diffusion and lighting automation systems to effect these objectives.

The ANZ Bank’s new head office in Melbourne’s Docklands precinct is Australia’s largest single-tenant office building, providing 87,000 m² of floor space that accommodates some 6500 staff.

Electrical industry association Master Electricians Australia is calling for state and federal governments to create a uniform solar feed-in tariff scheme around the country.

In production and work places, potentially explosive atmospheres can develop wherever flammable gases, vapours or dusts are mixed with the oxygen contained in the air.

Industry giant Siemens has publicly stated its support for the Prime Minister’s Task Group on Energy Efficiency report.