Weird electricity
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snorri
Legendary Member
- Location
- East coast, up a bit.
Could have been due to birds on the wires draining power as they tried to warm their feet.
jefmcg
Guru
Make sure you say "I had weird electricity this morning." I'm sure they get a lot of calls like that.
OP
OP
Mugshot
Cracking a solo.
Thank you very much.If I was still at my old work I could tell you specifically if it was a grid-level issue, but my money would be on something more local like a substation.
Grid brown-outs are quite major events, either caused by consumption in excess of system capacity (unlikely at the mo'), a generator failure or a big failure of distribution. If the system is pulling more than is available, the voltage can drop and the frequency becomes unstable (tolerance is +/-0.2 Hz on 50Hz from memory) which manifests itself as a 'brownout'.
I worked specifically on something called the 'balancing mechanism', which is the market that matches electricity demand with supply across the national grid in real-time as electrical energy cannot be effectively stored in large quantities, for the time-being at least.
Now if you want an explanation of the P142 electricity pricing mechanism........
I'll leave the P142 for now if that's ok, I've already had enough excitement for one day!
OP
OP
Mugshot
Cracking a solo.
I believe it's the correct technical expression.
Fab Foodie
hanging-on in quiet desperation ...
- Location
- Kirton, Devon.
I’ve been thinking about this all morning... and now my brain hertz....
It’s a generalisation, but in general (!) a short term low voltage incident like this will not cause significant damage - much electronic equipment these days tends to have switch mode power supplies which will accept an input anywhere between 90v and 300v.
Over-voltage, on the other hand, may be accompanied by bangs and smells of burning....
Over-voltage, on the other hand, may be accompanied by bangs and smells of burning....
OP
OP
Mugshot
Cracking a solo.
Watt?
steve292
Veteran
- Location
- Weston-super-mare, north somerset
Probably a substation issue, or a pole transformer somewhere. we had the same a few years ago. I put a multimeter on the tails coming into the house, and we had 190v coming in. I explained this over the phone to the engineer, who I was put through to after explaining to the person who answered the call that I was a control room operator at a power station, and no, thats not normal & I want an engineer pronto. Turnes out there was a pole transformer with shorted windings on fire in the fields behind the village.
OP
OP
Mugshot
Cracking a solo.
Oh alright then, I'll be in the beer thread.
mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
Yes, I'm shocked!
We had frequent brown outs our first winter here. Apparently we're in an area between two substations which can switch between them and it had been doing so badly. UK power networks didn't realise until I called to ask WTF, more or less. They changed something and it stopped.
It's not all bad being in a switchable area. One substation developed a fault and we were back on within 90minutes, while most of the village was dark well into the night.
subaqua
What’s the point
- Location
- Leytonstone
Wouldnt be a " brown out" from a local substation going offline. that would be a total loss of supply.
@Bollo gives a good explanation of why and thats the most likely , although you would have expected it to be reported and i cant find anything reported for today even using insider contacts on the DNO and the generation companies .
one other explanation is the breakdown of the PME supply on your distributor cable locally . taht can lead to all sorts of weird voltages up as well as down . Western Power will investigate that as they can cause serious incidents and need to be rectified under the ESQCR 2002.
jefmcg
Guru
Oh, if they are going to be reading this thread, I'll suggest they check for electrocuted possums in the substation. In my experience that is a common cause of blackouts and brownouts.
