Electric Clocks Running Fast?

[ZenBeam]

@engineer_comp_geek

The U.S. has never been that tight.

To start with, the U.S. doesn’t have just one grid. It is split into three different grids. There’s an eastern grid, a western grid, and Texas (because Texas always has to be off on its own…).

More generally, North America has four grids, with the fourth being Quebec (because French Canadians always have to be off on their own…)

Add in a few more generators, and the “grid” becomes too powerful for any single generator to affect it much. If you add more mechanical power to your generator, it can’t speed up because it can’t push all of those other generators faster. There are too many of them. So all that happens is your generator produces more power for the grid. If you remove mechanical power, all of those other generators continue pushing it, and your generator becomes a motor, powered by the grid. So by adding and removing mechanical power you can control how much power your generator adds to the grid (or even draws from it, if you remove too much), but you can no longer control the speed of your single generator.

Speeding up or slowing down the entire grid now becomes much more difficult. What you have to do is coordinate all of the generators (or at least the majority of the most powerful ones) and have them all speed up or s.

Does adding more power speed up the grid in some way proportional to the added power? For example, if my generator supplies 0.1% of the grid’s power, and I double its power output, does the grid frequency speed up by something like 1 part in 1000?
Just because it’s interesting, here’s a site which reports the real-time mains frequency of Europe. Clicking on Graph, it will start a graph of the frequency over the previous five minutes. I couldn’t find a similar site for the US. Unfortunately, it’s not working at the moment. It was working earlier today, so hopefully it will come back up.

[Chefguy]

@TSBG

Same experince with the clock on my Prius.

Me three. No idea why, since these are DC circuits and not reliant on 50/60 hz. Also, my furnace thermostat clock gains time, but nothing else in the house does (stove, micro, DVD, etc.).

[Polar_Iceman]

I recall reading somewhere (no cite) that this is a problem caused by the increase in the use of wind power and solar generators.

Because the input from these sources is so random, it is technically a nightmare to synchronize their input to the the grid. Accordingly, as they cut in and out, they cause frequency fluctuations, and this is manifest in the kind of problems described here.

The article I read said that this problem is only going to get worse as more of these alternative generators are connected to the grid; and all electrical equipment that relies on precise timing will soon need auxiliary power conditioners.

[Snnipe_70E]

@Polar_Iceman

I recall reading somewhere (no cite) that this is a problem caused by the increase in the use of wind power and solar generators.

Because the input from these sources is so random, it is technically a nightmare to synchronize their input to the the grid. Accordingly, as they cut in and out, they cause frequency fluctuations, and this is manifest in the kind of problems described here.

The article I read said that this problem is only going to get worse as more of these alternative generators are connected to the grid; and all electrical equipment that relies on precise timing will soon need auxiliary power conditioners.

I would think that the amount of power supplied to the grid by wind and solar is a small % of the total power of the grid. So they may have some effect but it would be a small amount.

[Saintly_Loser]

Thanks for all the explanation – quite a bit of it is over my head, but I get the general idea.

One more question – does this necessarily have to be caused by the power company, or can it be a local phenomenon – something happening after the power enters my apartment building, but before it reaches my apartment?

It’s still doing it, by the way, and I’m estimating the clocks are gaining somewhere in the neighborhood of a minute a day.

[sailor]

@Saintly_Loser

One more question – does this necessarily have to be caused by the power company, or can it be a local phenomenon – something happening after the power enters my apartment building, but before it reaches my apartment?

I already answered that. If it is caused by dirty power it can be caused by equipment on your premises or on your neighbors’ premises up or down the line.

It’s still doing it, by the way, and I’m estimating the clocks are gaining somewhere in the neighborhood of a minute a day.

Assuming you are connected to the general grid I do not believe this can be due to frequency shift. My first suspect would be dirty power and the first thing I would try would be a low pass filter and/or think if any new devices are online and try shutting those down and see if this corrects the problem.

Note that a surge protector is not a low pass filter and will not correct the problem. Only a low pass filter will make sure high frequency spikes do not reach the clock.

[ZenBeam]

Saintly Loser, have you bought anything electronic recently? Can you ask your neighbors if they’ve noticed anything?

[Saintly_Loser]

@ZenBeam

Saintly Loser, have you bought anything electronic recently? Can you ask your neighbors if they’ve noticed anything?

No, no new electronics. I do plan on asking some of the neighbors. It’s a big building – 400 units. If something is going on, I can’t be the only one having this problem.

[Translucent_Daydream]

You know whats funny is I am a fire alarm technician and I install fire alarm panels, and I have noticed that between my semi annual fire alarm inspections, the on board clocks for the fire panels are usually between 5 and 10 minutes off. I correct it, but always assumed that the local power plant isn’t keeping the hertz square on 1 per second (60 hertz). I am in the Houston area, so if its to be blamed on the power grid, then Texas’s grid isn’t as tight as it would seem.

[Melbourne]

@cochrane

The experiment was slated to occur in July, 2011, according to the article’s time stamp (6-24-2011), so if it did take place, it was over last year.

So they did the experiment, and nobody cared. Now they just let the frequency drift…

Some mains-powered Digital Electronic clocks count the number of cycles. They will run fast if there is extra garbage on the line, or if the line runs fast.

Mains powered analog clocks run synchronously with the the line. They will not notice garbage (they will run hot if there is too much, but for a clock that is never going to happen). They will slow down and speed up as the line frequency changes.

Here in Melb.Aus, the company used to guarantee something like 1.5 second total accuracy, 0.5% accuracy per cycle. Dunno what it is now. Our line frequency is different, so American clocks don’t work here (even if you shift the transformer taps correctly). And printer page rates are slower. And the turntable of my Microwave oven turns more slowly, with fewer total turns.

[JBDivmstr]

Nothing to add, really. Just that this is a really interesting thread.
Now that y’all have pointed this out, I plan on keeping an eye on the different clocks to see if I notice a difference.

[ZenBeam]

How are things going with your clocks, saintly Loser?

While doing some searches related to another thread, I came across an article, Solving the fast clock problem (PDF), from almost 20 years ago that talks about electric customers with a similar problem, and describes how a clock can run fast due to line noise as sailor said. With lots of nice pictures of dirty power.

In one case in the article, the cause of the dirty power was arcing on a faulty disconnect at a power substation. In another, it was a neighbor’s electronic air ionizer.

[SK-SD]

Very interesting. We installed roof top Solar panels two weeks ago and the electrical clocks started running faster, Gaining as much as 30 minutes in 6 hours. These run fine at night time. I called the solar company and also the tech support for the invertor manufacturer.
Both tech reps stated that they never heard of it before. I ask the question on Google and the first response explains it completely. It is the power source cutting in/out.

The electrical meter has an indicator that flips “left to right” to “right to left” depending upon the consumption and the generation level. This flip/flop is the real cause.

I will try a UPS outlet. Hopefully that will confirm it.

thanks.

[Ranger_Jeff]

When I was in the USCG, I was a LORAN Tech and then an instructor in the LORAN school where I taught the care and feeding of rubidium and cesium frequency standards. Anyway, for the precision we were concerned with, we didn’t bother with the peaks of any amplitude modulated pulses or sine waves. We used the negative-going crossovers, that is, when the sine wave crossed the zero V (ac) line on the o’scope.

But any motor where the rpm is dependent on the frequency of the incoming Vac is going to be a problem. I guess you should try to find analog clocks that use DC motors and quartz digital clocks.