Background
Interests include reading widely, music, photography,
hiking, art, dog training and breeding, astronomy, electromagnetics (EMC and radio ham training), share and forex
trading, property investment and renovations as well as spending time with
spouse and pets.
Since school I
have been interested in both the scientific as well as financial fields. I took part in the GEC-Expo for young
scientists twice: in 1989 and 1990. The
format of the exposition is poster sessions prepared on a topic of the your own choice. During my matric
year, I was part of an Accountant Managing Strategy game team. The game entailed being part of a management
team of a fictional factory and decisions had to be made regarding quantity of
production, advertising, R&D etc.
I was also
fond of athletics, especially the middle-distance track events. I have completed the Argus cycle tour three
times as well as the Burger/Sanlam cycle tour once.
On
the cultural front, I was part of the acting group during my matric year. At university I also took part in acting,
being the lighting engineer on two occasions. I also play classical guitar. The
most recent examinations, which I completed are music theory grade 5 (1998) as
well as classical guitar practical grade 6 (1999), both with honours from
UNISA.
More detail of my extracurricular activities can be found on the Hobbies page.
Studies
I thoroughly enjoyed the sciences at school: Physics, Chemistry and especially Mathematics. My thirst for knowledge indicated that I would most likely end up in a Research or Development environment. However, the lack of opportunities in pure research (at the time) indicated that studies in the pure sciences was not the best career choice. On top of that, I was advised that: "Engineers use pure science to enhance the quality of others". At an age where one wants to change the world and turn it into paradise for all, it was definitely the deciding factor in my choice of career...
The physics curriculum in matric included an introduction to electric and magnetic fields and the relationships between them. This whetted my appetite sufficiently to decide on Electrical engineering.
All my studies were completed at Stellenbosch University.
Professional Career
I have been with Research department at Eskom for over 10 years.
My main experience is in the field of Quality of Supply, i.e. all aspects relating to the power supply not being perfect. The ideal situation would be if every customer had its own generator, supplying a perfect sinusoidal voltage of perfect magnitude for all their load requirements. Unfortunately, this is not possible. The mere fact that the electricity has to be transported over transmission and distribution lines, affect the size and shape of the voltage reaching customers. Furthermore, whenever one customer switches on a load, the supply to other customers are affected. The field of Quality of Supply deals with all aspects in order to minimise these impacts on all customers.
| 
CV
