Slow electricity

[Stilllearning]

A few weeks ago, over here in Europe, it was noted that because of some electrical shenanigans in the Balkans, clocks on mains power were running slow.

As you can tell from my technical use of the word shenanigans, understanding what happened when I think it was Serbia, began acting up on the European electric grid, is a bit limited. Can anyone who knows about electrickery shed some easy to understand clarity?

I seem to remember lowered frequency was mentioned.

 

[Mike Hurley]

I live in the Balkans, shenanigans with water and electric suppliers are a daily occurrence here, 1 phase is often weak so the oven is a bit slow sometimes.

[system 4-50]

Doesn't it happen every year, at the beginning of April?

[Stilllearning]

6 minutes ago, system 4-50 said:

Doesn't it happen every year, at the beginning of April?

Possibly, except that this was back in February and it made the clock on our cooker run slow.

[Mike Hurley]

27 minutes ago, system 4-50 said:

Doesn't it happen every year, at the beginning of April?

April 1st every day here.

[Alan de Enfield]

1 hour ago, Stilllearning said:

A few weeks ago, over here in Europe, it was noted that because of some electrical shenanigans in the Balkans, clocks on mains power were running slow.

As you can tell from my technical use of the word shenanigans, understanding what happened when I think it was Serbia, began acting up on the European electric grid, is a bit limited. Can anyone who knows about electrickery shed some easy to understand clarity?

I seem to remember lowered frequency was mentioned.

 

It was Putin exerting his influence and showing what we have all got to look forward to  - he is a 'Time Lord'.

[dor]

Clocks driven by synchronous motors will vary if the frequency varied.    Many years ago, during periods of high demand the generators would run a bit slow with the extra load.  This was monitored and the frequency increased slightly overnight when demand was low so that the average frequency over 24 hours was 50Hz. This was to make sure electric clocks kept good time at a time when nearly all electric clocks relied on synchronous motors.

[bizzard]

Is the speaking clock slow, slurred and laboured too, when you phone them.

[Chewbacka]

DAB radio is behind FM radio by a second or two, so when they say the time is 6 o'clock which is correct DAB or FM???

[Boater Sam]

FM is the correct time.

There used to be an agreement that if the frequency of the mains dropped due to heavy loading, that it would be increased over a period to compensate and keep your clocks on time.

It would seem that this is still the same in Europe from where we import a lot of electricity. BUT not in the UK. The frequency dropped in February and all our synchronous clock are slow.

The deviation margin allowed is +/- 0.5 Hz on the nominal 50 Hz.

Unfortunately the connections to Europe are Direct Current so the UK can fail to follow the corrections made on the continent. 

[mrsmelly]

2 hours ago, Stilllearning said:

Possibly, except that this was back in February and it made the clock on our cooker run slow.

Just blame it on Brexit 

[Iain_S]

3 hours ago, bizzard said:

Is the speaking clock slow, slurred and laboured too, when you phone them.

Only when she's been at the cider.

[cuthound]

I think it unlikely that the frequency on the UK National Grid would drop due to nomal load fluctuations. 

The National Grid effectivery parallels loads of generators totalling over 27Twh of capacity, all of which are locked at 50 Hz. The load change needed to move the frequency significantly would be huge.

Edited April 3, 2018 by cuthound
Spillung

[Stilllearning]

It was a mainland of Europe only phenomenon.

[Machpoint005]

16 hours ago, mrsmelly said:

Just blame it on Brexit 

Or on anything else that hasn't happened yet either?

[Bee]

16 hours ago, mrsmelly said:

Just blame it on Brexit 

We'll be back to telling the time with sundials and how fast a candle burns down a couple of years after we leave.

[Detling]

14 hours ago, cuthound said:

I think it unlikely that the frequency on the UK National Grid would drop due to nomal load fluctuations. 

The National Grid effectivery parallels loads of generators totalling over 27Twh of capacity, all of which are locked at 50 Hz. The load change needed to move the frequency significantly would be huge.

Not true, My father worked in power stations as a charge engineer and one task they had was to keep two clocks in sync, one atomic, one from the mains frequency. It doesn't change much but when a big load comes on or a generator trips and drops off line the frequency can take a dip. It is the frequency of the generator that determines the regulator setting, so when load comes on the unit slows and this causes a power increase, done electronically/electrically, so fast but still there. If a big generator trips (fault shut down, line down or hit by trees) there can be a national wobble effect. You can see the actual stats on the website below, when I looked frequency was high at 50.120 Hz.

http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

This can be interesting watching on very cold days, we had one recently when with no real wind, everything was flat out and total load was 52 Giga watts so we were near power cuts.

[cuthound]

57 minutes ago, Detling said:

Not true, My father worked in power stations as a charge engineer and one task they had was to keep two clocks in sync, one atomic, one from the mains frequency. It doesn't change much but when a big load comes on or a generator trips and drops off line the frequency can take a dip. It is the frequency of the generator that determines the regulator setting, so when load comes on the unit slows and this causes a power increase, done electronically/electrically, so fast but still there. If a big generator trips (fault shut down, line down or hit by trees) there can be a national wobble effect. You can see the actual stats on the website below, when I looked frequency was high at 50.120 Hz.

http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

This can be interesting watching on very cold days, we had one recently when with no real wind, everything was flat out and total load was 52 Giga watts so we were near power cuts.

Interesting,  when I was working I installed many diesel and gas powered generators to data centres, telephone exchanges, hospitals banks and the like. A standard commissioning test of a generator system was to impose a sudden load change (by adding a sudden load and again by removing load) of 25% capacity and measure transient frequency change. If the frequency deviated by more than + 0.5% the test was  a failure. I would expect the generators in power stations to meet or exceed that spec.

Furthermore generator systems capable of synchronising with the mains must to be fitted with ROCOF (rate of change of frequency) protection which are designed to trip a faulty generator within either 0.5Hz, 0.5 second delay time  or 1.0 Hz, 0.5 second delay time (dependent upon capacity of generating system) in accordance with Engineering Recomendation G59/3-1.

Until 1st August 2016 the frequency tolerance used to be 0.125 Hz but was relaxed to encourage more private generation and thus have the flexibility to take the load of the rid at peak times.
 

Edited April 4, 2018 by cuthound
To add the last sentance

[Jess--]

for live monitoring of grid frequency try this one
it updates once per second and is fed by a system monitoring power supplied to the computer sending the figures.

only downside is that it uses flash so you may need to enable the plugin (if you can)

[WotEver]

2 hours ago, Bee said:

We'll be back to telling the time with sundials and how fast a candle burns down a couple of years after we leave.

I tried that but couldn’t find the sun. 

We always know when it’s 5pm give or take 10 minutes as one of our dogs always lets us know, with unerring accuracy, that it’s time for food!

[rusty69]

2 minutes ago, WotEver said:

I tried that but couldn’t find the sun. 

We always know when it’s 5pm give or take 10 minutes as one of our dogs always lets us know, with unerring accuracy, that it’s time for food!

I bet that's confusing when the clocks change.

[WotEver]

Just now, rusty69 said:

I bet that's confusing when the clocks change.

It takes about a week to reprogram him. It’s not so bad when the clocks go forward cos he gets fed an hour earlier which he thinks is great. But when the clocks go back in the autumn he’s convinced we’re starving him. 

[Scholar Gypsy]

We have solar panels (on a house!) that feed in power to the grid.

Presumably they just synchronise with whatever frequency the grid is putting out at that particular moment?

[Phil Ambrose]

3 hours ago, WotEver said:

I tried that but couldn’t find the sun. 

We always know when it’s 5pm give or take 10 minutes as one of our dogs always lets us know, with unerring accuracy, that it’s time for food!

We are on to something here, dog clocks or tummy clocks as they are sometimes know are very reliable, on our boat we have breakfast o'clock (8-00am)

Dinner  o'clock (6-00pm)

Dentastix o'clock (7-30pm)

Bonio o'clock ( 11-30pm)

And yes all these times are remarkable in their accuracy 

Phil 

[cuthound]

1 hour ago, Scholar Gypsy said:

We have solar panels (on a house!) that feed in power to the grid.

Presumably they just synchronise with whatever frequency the grid is putting out at that particular moment?

Yes, the panels produce DC, which is converted to AC and boosted to mains voltage and frequency by the inverter. The inverter then synchronises with and tracks the mains frequency.