Electical Contractor

Parker Ranch, a 225,000-acre cattle ranch in Hawaii, and PowerLight Corp., a leading designer, manufacturer, and installer of grid-connected commercial solar electric systems, have joined in the world's largest hybrid solar-wind energy power project.

Blackouts, brownouts, surges, and outages cause downtime—costly downtime in many cases. With billions of dollars at stake, backup power strategies are no longer optional. They are a necessary way of ensuring reliable power. That peace of mind requires carefully planned strategies.

Many of us have experienced the sensation of time speeding up. Things we planned to achieve didn’t happen because we were busy with other “stuff”—and then another year was over and opportunities missed. It is often no different in the electrical contracting business.

The leaps in technology and a rising appetite for greater bandwidth steered copper cable manufacturers into new territory where production and installation is more difficult and testing is a gamble. On the other hand, glass fiber and its connecting hardware became more affordable.

Valuable equipment installed on rooftops requires careful and specific grounding in order to be protected and to function as intended.

There is not an exact science to bidding a telecommunications cabling project. As you review several, you will also notice there are no standard bid formats. The range goes from cabling a building to a division done by a professional engineer.

Companies with deep pockets and locally strong brand names are providing services traditionally provided by electrical contractors and, in some cases, buying electrical contractors. Will these activities dramatically reshape the electrical construction market?

A few months ago, in the September issue, I was reporting on the booming growth in the electrical contracting industry during 1992-1997. Guess what: It ain't over yet! We're on a roll. Now it's time to gaze into the crystal ball and see what the year 2000 holds for us. I have plenty of help.