Sparks fly at Toronto

Seven members of the Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory from ECS led by Dr Paul Lewin recently attended the International Symposium on Electrical Insulation (ISEI 2006) held in Toronto, Canada. Approximately 180 delegates from all over the world attended, and the ECS party formed the second largest contingent. The Conference focused on developments and applications associated with all aspects of electrical insulation and power engineering in the power generation and distribution world. There were 18 oral sessions and one poster session covering diverse topics such as High Voltage cables, transformers, life assessment, partial discharges and electrical materials. Contributions were from industrial and commercial organisations as well as academic institutions. The HV laboratory contributed 8 papers out of the 136 published in the proceedings of which 6 were presented orally and 2 at the evening poster session. The real benefit from the conference was that the research students from the Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory could see their work in context and also know that their work is on a level with institutions worldwide. The delegates from ECS were: Dr Paul Lewin, Dr Steve Dodd, Dr Dave Swaffield, Mark Mitchinson, Liwei Hao, Azrul Mohd-Ariffin, Dr Ian Hosier.