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Thread ID: 119890	2011-08-15 08:10:00	Brownout!	george12 (7)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1223443	2011-08-15 08:10:00	Never experienced this before. We are currently getting only ~170 volts in my house (for the last half hour or so). This is accompanied by various micro-outages and a two second outage. Is this supposed to ever happen? I would have thought the power should be cut if they can't even supply 200 volts. Mysterious.	george12 (7)
1223444	2011-08-15 09:17:00	Hope you have rung your power supplier. Whatever is causing the fault may not be enough to trigger the safety cut outs, which can happen.	Jeff (1070)
1223445	2011-08-15 09:30:00	You have phase out somewhere. Make sure you turn off all your appliances until it comes right and yes, ring you supplier post haste.	tut (12033)
1223446	2011-08-15 09:59:00	How about the obvious. It is cold. More power than usual is being used. This drags the voltage down. The Power Generators should see this on their meters & boost power generation. However your power supplier may not want to ask for more as tis may force them into "Penalty Payments" for wanting more than they budgeted for. Water heaters will be "Rippled Off" all over the country as well. Been there done that. I imagine that the power flow, which isnormally South to North Island thro the Cook Straight cable, is either nil or flowing to the South. PJ	Poppa John (284)
1223447	2011-08-15 11:35:00	You have phase out somewhere. Make sure you turn off all your appliances until it comes right and yes, ring you supplier post haste. Interesting. I rang the supplier and got a recorded message saying they were only accepting calls for life-threatening emergencies at this time :( Could you tell me more about the 'phase out' issue? Are you suggesting one of the three phases in the neighbourhood is out? In such a case I would expect 1/3 of my neighbours not to have power, would I not? Or is phase out the name of a different condition in the grid? My next door neighbour has the same issue, by the way. I suspect it could just be a load thing as Poppa John suggests, as the voltage has risen from its worst of about 162 to around 192 now. But Poppa John, it's not obvious to me - I had thought that they would not allow it to get that low and would cause blackouts. Of course that is just based on a hunch and it seems I may well be completely incorrect. I have just never in my lifetime seen a supply voltage this low.	george12 (7)
1223448	2011-08-15 11:57:00	When I was a power board faultman many years ago the situation was called 'half power' by the customers when they phoned it in. Most of the time it was one of three fuses on the 11000v side of a transformer and the the two remaining phases fed into the dead phase but only giving about half of 230v on the low voltage side of the transformer which feeds to you house. If you and your neighbours house are on that phase then the voltage is considerably lowered. Fridge motors never used to like this and burnt out very quickly if left switched on. As did 3 phase water pumps that didnt have the modern day protection available There was a lot less electronics in those days so dont know what would be affected today but I know I would turn of the whole house at the mains until it was repaired. There are of course other reasons for such symptoms and a wire bought down by snow could also be one.	tut (12033)
1223449	2011-08-15 13:25:00	Ah I see. I think it was load, because the voltage has climbed to 215v now (probably as people have gone to bed). Seems our power grid (or at least my local transformer) couldn't very well handle the load tonight. A 30% voltage drop seems pretty intense though.	george12 (7)
1223450	2011-08-15 23:38:00	On the radio this morning I think it was the manager of Transpower that was explaining that there are 2 x 110,000v lines and 2 x 220,000v lines into Wellington and last night for a while they were down to 1 of the 110,000v lines and that was being struck by lightning. Snow or ice had tripped the others. Be thankful you had any power at all :D	PaulD (232)
1223451	2011-08-16 00:02:00	Yes I heard that too. Mind you, the 110kV line from Haywards to Wilton is quite grunty. Very thick multiple conductors and only a short distance It must have caused a tough decision for Transpower. Either let the last remaining line into Wellington go out and plunge Wellington into darkness, or let it stay on load and potentially damage hundreds of thousands of appliances Interesting what stayed on and tripped out at our house. The Bravia TV was the most sensitive. Old-style fluorescent lights also tripped out (not CFLs). We complain about FTP sessions tripping out for no reason but it didn't miss a beat during the troubles (Filezilla)	BBCmicro (15761)
1223452	2011-08-16 01:37:00	There was a lot less electronics in those days so dont know what would be affected today but I know I would turn of the whole house at the mains until it was repaired. Anything with an SMPS that auto-selects input voltage could be at risk: A subject dear to my heart due to a recent unpleasant experience - Was using a Picturelel videoconference ISDN codec on a job when, because of a powerline fault, the line voltage dropped to 170 volts. The PicTel has a big Onan switchmode PSU which is autoswitching between 100-120 and 200-240 volts. It got confused, and (regrettably) chose the former.... with very smelly results. (www.repairfaq.org)	Agent_24 (57)
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