Opportunities for students!

RS Components has launched its latest initiative, tailored to all levels of education; from primary through to higher education. The series delivers aspirational online sessions to encourage innovative thinking and feed the students' creativity.

Isabella Mascarenhas

Isabella Mascarenhas, VP of Grass Roots at RS, commented: “Opportunities for students to engage in classes online are particularly important at the moment, and are invaluable for supporting parents in their home-schooling efforts. Our Friends of RS video series provides an unconventional and uplifting learning experience that we are sure will inspire creativity across the different youth groups.”

‘Friends of RS’ is a four-part series of Facebook Watch parties presented as-live by a selection of inspirational young engineers, inventors and educators. The bi-monthly learning workshops are being hosted on the RS Facebook channel during June and July, followed by live Q and A sessions. All of the sessions will be available on demand after initial airing.

The four interactive Facebook sessions cover: Primary Education • Covering the basics of turning a creative idea into an invention (Ruth Amos, Kids Invent Stuff – 15 June 2020 – now available on-demand) Secondary education: • Cleaning the oceans – highlighting the problems facing our oceans and its wildlife, and how engineering innovations are helping to solve plastic pollutions. (Ludovic Grosjean, OceanX Group – 29 June 2020) • A maker activity to create a social distancing lanyard for helping people to return to school and the workplace safely. (Nathan Ruttley, Embedism – 13 July 2020) Further/higher education: • How students can showcase themselves effectively to prospective employers and how to stand out from the crowd. (Volunteers of the Electrocomponents Fresh Advisors Board – FAB15 – 27 July 2020)

Each speaker will be available to answer questions from students live online following the 15-minute pre-recorded video learning sessions.

Hot data on the Arctic Circle!

ABB has won an order worth about $11 million from Facebook's subsidiary Pinnacle Sweden, to power its first server facility outside the United States.

They will build two high- and medium-voltage air- and gas-insulated switchgear substations that will supply power to a datacenter being built in Luleå, a coastal town in northern Sweden. The data center will be the largest of its kind in Europe.

“The substations are designed to handle the high electricity demand of such facilities” said Peter Leupp, head of ABB's Power Systems division. “They will provide reliable and quality power supply to the server buildings.”

The construction of Facebook's datacenter will be carried out in three phases. The facility will consist of three server buildings with a total area of 84,000 square meters, equivalent to 11 full-sized soccer fields. The first building is scheduled to become operational in December 2012, and will have a substantial need for electrical energy to power and cool its servers.

Located near the Arctic Circle, Luleå’s cold climate is well suited for the natural cooling of server buildings. This, along with a stable supply of clean energy from renewable sources as well as reliable
communications and electricity networks, paved the way for the choice of Luleå as a location for its new center, making it a European node for Facebook’s data traffic.

ABB will also install substation automation systems compliant with the global IEC 61850 standard and equipped with the latest protection and control products. The installed capacity of the substations will exceed the city’s normal consumption on cold winter days.

• See article "The best cooling solutions," Frost & Sullivan on cooling Data Centres 15/12/2011