21 ms·

Continuing frequency deviation in the Continental European Power System

478 points by Aissen 9y ago

FearNotDaniel 9y ago
As a community of mostly engineering-minded folks, I hope we can take this as a warning to not make our mission-critical systems depend on inputs that are merely convenient side-effects of third-party systems provided free of charge and without obligation. I mean, it doesn't matter how many people post comments here saying things like "50 Hz AC is more accurate than quartz crystal for timekeeping", the fact is that no external agency can take over the action of your quartz crystal and force your clocks to slow down or speed up, whether intentional or not, as an effect of their political actions. If you want a free source of mostly-reliable oscillations, and it doesn't have any real impact if it falls out of sync, sure go ahead and use something like this. But in the case of time, if you want to sync a clock in Western Europe with something that is free and non-internet based, you're much better off using DCF77 [0], which is specifically designed to synchronize time and comes with specific uptime and quality promises. Still ultimately susceptible to political actions, of course, in extreme cases, but at least you know its primary purpose is to transmit time information, and it is in the control of only one (relatively) stable government as opposed to being subject to the unpredictable changes brought about by interactions between multiple interconnected systems. DFC77 doesn't solve the same problem as using AC as an oscillator, of course, since you still need an oscillator to keep your clock going during the downtimes that are permitted to the radio signal. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCF77 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCF77
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  Good point about this service, I almost forgot that it still exists (although reception is somewhat spotty indoors). The basic advice is sane ("do not rely on side effects"), yet "third-party systems provided free of charge and without obligation" sounds exactly like that, except now it's putting all your eggs in a basket that's controlled by one entity (be it DCF77, or the GPS temporal component). I would think that the AC-as-a-clock is usually chosen for convenience rather than high reliability - "the juice is needed anyway, why bother with an extra receiver?" - and if you actually need to tell the time, checking multiple independent sources would be encouraged :)
  - lb1lf 9y ago
    DCF77 surely cannot be that bad indoors on the Continent? When living at what was then often quoted as the extreme fringe of the coverage area - Trondheim, Norway, on 63,5 degrees of latitude - I had reliable coverage as long as the clocks were kept in window sills (hence, effectively outdoors) However, just moving down to my current home (on 62 degrees, or -roughly speaking- 11% closer to the transmitter site), I now have reliable coverage everywhere (granted, in a wooden house - but the DCF77 alarm clock in the basement synchs every hour, too)
    - gpvos 9y ago
      I've found that antenna orientation matters, even in the Netherlands which is much closer to DCF77 (concrete house).
      - c3833174 9y ago
        Yes, it needs to be perpendicular to the direction of frankfurt for best results You can find more details in the second page of this datasheet https://www.gemischtwaren-haendler.de/shopdateien/3942_1.pdf https://www.gemischtwaren-haendler.de/shopdateien/3942_1.pdf
        gpvos 9y ago
        More importantly, you would need to know how the antenna is oriented within the enclosure of your clock. I'm pretty sure that that wasn't mentioned in the manual of the one I bought.
        c3833174 9y ago
        Most clocks are thin, so it's easier to guess the placement of the antenna.
        Piskvorrr 9y ago
        Usually the antenna is parallel to the board - and the board is positioned in the largest dimension, which tends to be also parallel with the display.
- cesarb 9y ago
  Another advantage of DCF77 and similar is that they also broadcast the current time, while the 50Hz or 60Hz AC is just a frequency. If you have only a frequency, you have to set the initial time manually every time you lose power.
- jwalton 9y ago
  I imagine the difference between DCF77 and a 50Hz clock is similar to the difference between a $40 clock and a $10 clock. :P
  - blattimwind 9y ago
    Radio-controlled is pretty much the default around here (and the cheap ones cost perhaps 5 €); I think I've yet to see a grid-powered alarm clock.
    - philf 9y ago
      Here's an IC used in some alarm clocks that uses the power grid's frequency, along with a list of products that use it: https://www.radiomuseum.org/tubes/tube_lm8560.html https://www.radiomuseum.org/tubes/tube_lm8560.html
    - c3833174 9y ago
      It was mostly used in the common radio alarm clocks, the ones with a 4digit red 7 segment display that were all based on an IC from the 70s that handles everything (minus the radio which is a completely indipendent module).
- rowyourboat 9y ago
  > As a community of mostly engineering-minded folks, I hope we can take this as a warning to not make our mission-critical systems depend on inputs that are merely convenient side-effects of third-party systems provided free of charge and without obligation. That is not entirely true. The TSO is committed to keeping the average frequency of the power grid at 50Hz and has always communicated that. It tries to keep grid time within 20 seconds of UTC, and has historically achieved this. So it is reasonable to use the grid as a time source where high accuracy is not required. The current situation is highly irregular. Using the grid frequency for time keeping is a secondary function of the electricity grid, but it is not merely an unintended side-effect. I agree with the rest of your points about using a different time source where high accuracy is required.
- zaarn 9y ago
  >depend on inputs that are merely convenient side-effects of third-party systems provided free of charge and without obligation. I would disagree. You don't get it for free, you pay for that. The Grid frequency is regulated and the powergrid providers have, IIRC, even legal obligations on how far they are allowed to deviate the time. Using AC as clock signal is good enough if being wrong by a few minutes is not mission critical. If you absolutely do need accurate time use DCF77 or GPS.
- mseebach 9y ago
  DCF77 also tells you what time it is, AC can only keep whatever time's been set in sync. The equivalent would be to include a 50-cent crystal oscillator instead. On a only barely related note, I've been playing with the idea of implementing a NTP synced clock on an ESP8266. It'd wake up, join wifi and sync NTP every few hours, then keep time on its internal crystal in between. It should be a good deal cheaper, work anywhere in the world, and have better indoor coverage (I have a DCF77 clock in an interior bathroom in London, and it never syncs. Kind-of defeats the purpose that I have to move it to a south-facing room for the day to get it to sync).
  - pjc50 9y ago
    The UI for entering the Wifi password is always the biggest problem with these things. The Dash buttons have an interesting solution involving audio.
    - Drdrdrq 9y ago
      One solution would be qr scanner...
    - a1369209993 9y ago
      You could try a USB SATA drive with a FAT16 filesystem containing "/wifipass.txt". USB-1.0 low speed is 1.5Mb/s and while I can't find documentation on ESP8266's GPIO switch speed, it's CPU is 40MHz, so bitbanging should be feasible.
  - c3833174 9y ago
    Or just reporpose an old phone.
    - mseebach 9y ago
      I was thinking about this in terms of building a product. Even with that, a clock generally runs for months, even years, on a single battery. Not exactly phone territory, but might be feasible on the ESP8266, depending on how the oscillator behaves in deep sleep mode.
- pjc50 9y ago
  GPS is also an extremely accurate source of time, although since it's on a much shorter wavelength your reciever needs a clear view of the sky and is much more complicated.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
raverbashing 9y ago
"Clocks in Europe that depend on the grid frequency" which usually means alarm clocks. I guess a lot of clocks use a crystal now so they're less dependent on the grid frequency. Also don't buy an alarm clock in the US and bring it to Europe and vice versa, unless it is user adjustable (or you are comfortable with a soldering iron)
gpvos 9y ago
This map of the European power system is linked from The Featured Article: https://www.entsoe.eu/Documents/Publications/maps/2017/Map_Continental-Europe-2.500.000_400dpi.pdf https://www.entsoe.eu/Documents/Publications/maps/2017/Map_C... [complex pdf, doesn't render well in some viewers]. Several fascinating points: - Denmark is split between the Nordic (Sjaelland and Lolland) and continental systems. Anyone know why? - Even North Africa is synced to Europe. - A corner of northeast Poland is fed by Belarus. - Cyprus is disconnected, and northern Cyprus apparently has no network to speak of. - You can see the DC links to the other systems, and e.g. a back-to-back converter at Alytus, Lithuania, that isolates the European from the ex-Soviet system. But I see no such arrangements at the Belarusian and Ukrainian borders, or at the borders with Syria and Iraq. Is this just missing information, or are these countries also synced in some way?
- asymmetric 9y ago
  For some reason I'm having trouble opening the PDF, both in Firefox and with evince on Linux.
  - garaetjjte 9y ago
    This is really heavy pdf. Try llpp or mupdf.
    - asymmetric 9y ago
      mupdf worked like a charm! Any idea what makes it so performant (or evince so little)?
      - blattimwind 9y ago
        mupdf is, in my experience, much faster than poppler for complex documents, but mupdf-based viewers generally offer less features than those employing poppler's services (like Okular). These two things might be related.
    - scott_karana 9y ago
DyslexicAtheist 9y ago
NTP, but for electrical grids
- cyphunk 9y ago
  connected botnet ready clocks, but for electrical grids? Or perhaps you just meant setting up a (non-internet) grid time protocol? It would be a risky venture, I'm guessing, as there may be other functions that rely on the 50Hz grid consistency that would also then need their own special protocol on the grid.
  - Piskvorrr 9y ago
    Well, there's already the peak/off-peak signalling. You could theoretically send another signal, perhaps with time encoded, at midnight or some such. Note that this is a unidirectional broadcast, as opposed to the complexity of an actual bidirectional network.
mrweasel 9y ago
I sort of wonder how much of a problem that is any more. I have exactly zero clocks that aren't NTP enabled, radio synchronized or just dumb battery watches. Still an interesting "problem" non the less.
- Matumio 9y ago
  Those clocks being off is just a slight annoyance, the actual problem is the threat to grid stability.
Aissen 9y ago
The delay is now up to 6 minutes since January !
- digitalengineer 9y ago
  Correct. This is crazy. Everything from my central heating system, kitchen appliances and bed-side alarm clock is off by 6 minutes.
  - beojan 9y ago
    You must have a really old alarm clock. And why wouldn't you correct the time manually if you know it's drifting?
    - pantalaimon 9y ago
      What innovations in alarm clock tech am I missing out on that would make me want to upgrade?
      - foepys 9y ago
        Being part of an IoT botnet seems to be all the rage nowadays.
      - Piskvorrr 9y ago
        Essentially the whole "watches you while you sleep [not creepy at all] so it can wake you when you're not in a deep sleep phase." I do use a smartphone for that, as it already has motion sensors, and it is indeed somewhat gentler to wake up to. (OTOH, if I absolutely positively need to wake up at $TIME, the ticking mechanical bedside clock of my grandfather it is: it hasn't been innovated for a century, needs to be manually wound, is completely independent of any external source, and rings loud enough to rouse the dead)
      - ithkuil 9y ago
        cheap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_clock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_clock ?
saagarjha 9y ago
I was curious how the "normal" P=IV formula you learn in school worked here, since I wasn't understanding how frequency could possibly change the amount of power outputted. The linked article (https://www.swissgrid.ch/swissgrid/en/home/experts/topics/frequency.html https://www.swissgrid.ch/swissgrid/en/home/experts/topics/fr...) explains the reason: a decrease in frequency means that the generators are actually turning slower, so there's less power generated overall.
- carlob 9y ago
  Also remember that P=IV is the equation for DC, not AC.
  - raverbashing 9y ago
    It is, if V is the RMS equivalent and the power factor is zero
  - arghwhat 9y ago
    Almost. I assume you know, but P=IV is only an approximation when reactive loads are close to zero. It is not the "DC formula". S is "complex power", meaning it includes both the real (resistive) and imaginary (reactive) parts. It is measured in volt-ampere, and is calculated as S=I_z x V, where I_z is the impedance current ("complex current"). P is "real power" (resistive) measured in watts, and is calculated as P=I_r x V or P=S x cos(φ), where I_r is the resistive current ("real current"), S is the complex power, and φ is the phase angle or "power factor"—the delay between voltage and current as an angle. In a pure DC system (think "incandescent bulb on a battery"), the phase angle φ is 0 making P equal S, as cos(0) equals 1. However, in real life, it is only a vague approximation. Electronics switch currents and have reactive components, giving them a non-zero phase angle. They're more complicated to calculate on than an pure sine-wave AC system, not less. (I apologize for any hiccups above. I stopped being an electrician a looooong time ago.)
  - saagarjha 9y ago
    Yeah, yeah, you now have a couple √2's because you're dealing with RMS voltages and currents, and a cos(θ) for the phase angle, but when it's all combined it ends up differing by some constant factor.
codesnik 9y ago
using AC frequency for timekeeping seems ridiculous. Does quartz generator cost anything?
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  What for, if you already have a clock signal that has been reliable until now?
  - bad_user 9y ago
    Because its reliability is happenstance.
    - zaarn 9y ago
      No it's standardized. Outside of accidents the power providers take extreme care to keep the frequency synchronized to UTC. Exactly. A clock using the power grid as reference might be off by 4 minutes over the day but on average it will be perfectly on time.
      - wglb 9y ago
        It used to be in the US that some operators would have a plain off-the-shelf alarm clock in the control room, and, in case the evening load made the frequency dip, operators would adjust things so that the clock would read 6am (for example) exactly the next day.
    - Piskvorrr 9y ago
      Nope. There's man-years of effort per day in keeping it reliable; as evidenced by the point that it takes major political meddling over a prolonged period to throw it off, and an article on HN for people to even notice "it has been acting sort of weird, now that you mention it". "I didn't notice until now" is quite the opposite of happenstance, on par with the PHB mantra "what do we need devops for, anyway, the network seems to be up!" Well it's up because devops is keeping it up. Likewise, the grid doesn't just magically self-balance around 50 Hz.
gchokov 9y ago
Time is relative, you know? :) Maybe time in Bulgaria (where I live) indeed goes slower. p.s. I'll probably get downvotes for my comment..
moviuro 9y ago
As long as it's not 2^32 seconds (~136 years) late/early, NTP will still be able to save the devices it runs on! [0] [0] https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2017/09/27/2153/ https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2017/09/27/2153/
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  These are devices from simpler times: no networking stack, not even an OS, sometimes not even firmware, just the basic function encoded with transistors. There's literally nothing to run on. Think water heaters, not RPi.
  - moviuro 9y ago
    I know! Though strangely, my own kitchen appliances didn't participate in the continental time-shift (my microwave oven is still ticking correctly). And my remark was more: even NTP can't save ou if you shift the time too much, so it's a good thing it's only ~6 minutes so far.
    - cesarb 9y ago
      > even NTP can't save ou if you shift the time too much, so it's a good thing it's only ~6 minutes so far. Only for the initial step, or if the frequency of the quartz crystal is too fast/slow. The NTP daemon continuously adjusts the clock frequency, so if it was already running and synchronized, the shift will never be more than a few milliseconds.
- zaarn 9y ago
  Probably not considering some of these used a stepper motor to drive their clock that was coupled to the grid frequency. These devices don't have any computing power.
ju-st 9y ago
how can energy go missing because of an energy war? I found this but I don't understand: "Kosovo has been using more power than it produces while Serbia, responsible for balancing the Kosovo grid, has failed to do this, Nies said. As a result, Serbia has been free-riding on the system."
- brownbat 9y ago
  Suppose you and I have an agreement to generate power for our neighboring households. We each have solar which works most the time, but if it's too cloudy and we're both using a little more, we'll each fire up some temporary generators to cover the loss. You think I'm using more power than you expected when we started the agreement, but we're both spending the same amount on fuel and solar, so you decide not to fire up your generator. The system might still have enough power to basically run everything, but it might be sluggish, you might get "brown outs" which is when lights are on but dimmer, rather than going all the way to black. A brown out is a drastic, noticeable reduction in frequency. The grid is a bit like a wind up toy where there's a lot of potential energy in the system, but as you extract that energy for work and don't replace it, things (machines, lights) slow down before they stop. Now scale this up from two households to millions. Deviations in frequency might be incredibly slight, and not noticeable to the naked eye. But they accumulate over time if you've tied precision equipment to the grid. Theoretically, certain industrial machines designed to run at specific frequencies will wear faster or break when run off frequency for too long. I'm not sure if those effects generally happen at such small deviations or not.
- caf 9y ago
  Basically, there are people using power on the grid without paying anyone to generate a corresponding quantity. This means that less power is going into the grid than is being taken out of it, an amount that has accumulated since January to a bit over 100GWh. This missing 100GWh of energy has been collectively sapped from the inertia of the all spinning synchronous machines connected to the grid - mostly generators, but also motors - as a result of which they are spinning slower than they should be. Slowing spinning synchronous generators means a lower grid frequency.
  - 9y ago
denzil_correa 9y ago
ELI5 : https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/82h83b/disagreements_beteeen_kosovo_and_serbia_cause/dvafs2v/ https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/82h83b/disagreement...
brownbat 9y ago
Trying to find more details on the specific political issue (ie, not the regional baseline, but the power issue in particular). Best I've got is an offhand sentence that Kosovo is using more power than it produces and Serbia refuses to balance that consumption. https://www.platts.com/latest-news/electric-power/london/kosovo-serbia-imbalance-impacting-european-system-26903978 https://www.platts.com/latest-news/electric-power/london/kos...
- jesperhh 9y ago
  I found some more information: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/government-pays-a-million-euro-for-electricity-bills-in-northern-kosovo-03-06-2018 http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/government-pays-a-mi... Since the end of the Kosovo war in 1999, the four northern Serb-majority municipalities have not paid Pristina for their energy consumption. To make up for the shortfall, people from other areas of Kosovo had a percentage added to their bills to pay for the north’s electricity. In December, the Energy Regulator’s Office announced that electricity bills will be reduced by 3.5 per cent as consumers will no more cover the cost of the four municipalities’ power as they have done for the past 19 years.
  - moltar 9y ago
    I imagine everyone was Bitcoin mining there and the bill was going thru the roof.
    - ermir 9y ago
      Would you believe me if I told you that because of the legal situation (Northern Kosovo does not pay any electricity), there have been tons of crypto mining operations that have sprung up. There are stories of Russians coming all the way to set up warehouses full of mining rigs and generate cryptocurrency using free electricity. Source: I live here.
- cat199 9y ago
  also (speculation): raising this issue now (rather than earlier in the year) in response to the near-end of the syrian pipeline proxy war, bulgarias mysteriously financed repurchase of it's own gas lines from czech holding co, lavrov and gazprom ceo in belgrade unveiling giant mosaic, etc etc etc...
etaioinshrdlu 9y ago
The headline is kind of clickbait, almost no clocks in daily life get their base clock frequency from powerlines. Edit: Nevermind
- triplesec 9y ago
  This is untrue given the examples in the article such as oven clocks
- baq 9y ago
  yeah except the one in my oven, in my microwave and in my coffee machine... all late by exactly the same amount.
  - wiz21c 9y ago
    same for me, drove me nuts. Fortunately my PC looks at atomic clocks...
    - Piskvorrr 9y ago
      Your PC also has a quartz oscillator and battery backing, there's no way it synchronizes time from AC power.
      - wiz21c 9y ago
        sure, I just meant my PC has a very sophisticated (hence fragile) way of keeping its time accurate. And forget about battery backing, it's a desktop and its bios battery is long dead :-) (hence the atomic clock)
        Piskvorrr 9y ago
        Once you do synchronize it off the net, it's still the quartz oscillator keeping the local beat, as it were :)
        9y ago
folli 9y ago
I find stuff like this extremely interesting. It's incredible how connected and interdependent we have become as a society and how we only notice this if things start to break (or at least run out of spec); even if it only impacts such supposedly minor things as a clock on a baking oven.
- zaarn 9y ago
  A lot of modern society depends on someone not fucking up. DNS could break if the root nameservers stop working for whatever reason. BGP is a major problem if somebody gets a free pass on sending garbage. Using AC as a clock is not the worst and most of the time extremely reliable.
- anvandare 9y ago
  I'd love to see a gargantuan DOT file mapping out all the world's supply chains, across all industries and economies. I wonder how many 'only one source in the world' (similar to the 1970's chip saws[1]) lynchpin nodes there are... [1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/22/japan_quake_semi_issues/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/22/japan_quake_semi_is...
  - grafporno 9y ago
    Here's something similar for >110kV powerlines: https://openinframap.org/#4/47.96/21.01/Power https://openinframap.org/#4/47.96/21.01/Power
mattmanser 9y ago
My microwave adds a minute every week or so because the UK's frequency is slightly different to the the rest of the EU. The clock on the microwave I have is keyed to the continental europe's frequency rather than the UK. It's actually moderately annoying. It was a fairly well reviewed (cheap) machine from Wilkinsons, a budget brand. Perils of cheap electronics. EDIT: Well sounds like it's not the case, TIL, not sure where I picked that up from.
- neilwilson 9y ago
  The frequency is exactly the same 50hz. The voltage is usually 240 volts rather than 230, but within the acceptable range (which can be as high as 256). Higher voltage is good. The kettle boils faster.
  - Angostura 9y ago
    To see what the Grid's up to in roughly real time, I love this site. http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk After last week where demand was very heavy and frequency was below 50Hz, the frequency is currently the highest I have ever seen (50.107Hz) You can also see the French grid using the same site. This shows the European frequency at 50.024Hz, so perhaps corrective action is being taken. Edit - as you were, 5 minutes later UK frequency is 49.902Hz and European frequency is 49.993Hz
- saagarjha 9y ago
  > the UK's frequency is slightly different to the the rest of the EU It is? What does the UK use?
  - beojan 9y ago
    It's not. His microwave must be faulty.
  - carlmr 9y ago
    If we go by his numbers and assume the EU uses exactly 50Hz, then +1 minute over a week (7 * 24 * 60 min = 10,080 min) would mean that the frequency in the UK is roughly 10081/10080 * 50 ~ 50.005Hz. I'm not sure if that is the case.
pingec 9y ago
It's interesting that fixing this delay will involve setting the grid's frequency above 50 to 50.01 Hz which will advance clocks about 15 seconds a day and thus it will take 3 to 4 weeks to bring the clocks back on time. And they cannot set it higher than 50.01 because at that point mechanisms for bringing the frequency down to 50 would automatically kick in.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  Would it "fix" it though? I mean I've already heard a lot of people that just reset the time on their clocks, so in 4 weeks they have to dial them back again. Maybe for unattended time keeping things?
  - Piskvorrr 9y ago
    Most of the clocks do not have a human nearby to push the reset button (if there is one), as they're industrial automation. Alarm clocks and microwave ovens are mostly a side effect here; and yes, if you have adjusted the time manually, you'll need to do that again.
    - tzs 9y ago
      I wonder how those industrial automation clocks deal with power outages. Europe has quite reliable power, but even the best electricity providers have occasional unplanned outages. As of a few years ago the best was Germany, where the average customer had about 15 minutes per year without power due to unplanned outages (excluding outages caused by exceptional events). (For comparison, the best quartile of utilities in the US averaged about 90 minutes/year for their average customer).
- mhandley 9y ago
  Where does that 50.01 number come from? For the last 25 minutes, the UK grid figures have been: 50.217999 50.049999 49.990002 50.016998 50.106998 50.091999 They seem to go well above 50.01 for significant periods. Data from http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
M_Bakhtiari 9y ago
I'm usually against technical solutions for political problems, but in this case it seems like a no-brainer to switch to cheap and ubiquitous crystal oscillators to decouple timekeeping accuracy from regional political stability.
- saagarjha 9y ago
  The benefits to keeping timekeeping tied to power is that often the power supply is much more accurate than any reasonably priced quartz oscillator you'd want to put into an appliance.
- zaarn 9y ago
  AC grid frequency is much more stable than any crystal oscillator. After any number of years, AC will, on average, drift 0 seconds from UTC. It's being sync'd using atomic clocks to keep it as perfect as possible precisely because people use it as clock.
  - mcv 9y ago
    Which is better depends on whether you need short term accuracy or long term. On the long term, grid clock is more accurate. In the short term, crystals are more accurate.
    - howard941 9y ago
      This. In Florida US grid zero crossings randomly bounce around +/- 20nS over a few seconds. Viewing the waveform on a scope can be enlightening (or inflammatory and shocking if one's not properly isolated)
      - wglb 9y ago
        I would be willing to bet that this is noise.
- contravariant 9y ago
  I don't think the timekeeping is the part to be concerned about.
mrtksn 9y ago
The short version of the story is that grid electricity in Europe is produced by rotating the turbines 50 times a second and that's where the 50Hz AC electricity comes from. Apparently to match the demand at given instance electricity plants rotate their turbines a bit faster or a bit slower instead of switching a complete plant on and off[edit: this is not exactly right, see the reply below], which results in slight deviations from the 50Hz standard but it is fine as long as it stays between the limits. At the end of the day, as the demand increases and decreases, the average frequency would be 50Hz and engineers took advantage of that fact to create clocks that may not be accurate to the second but accurate on average. How do they do that? They count the change in the electricity and assume that 50 changes are exactly 1 second. Unfortunately, due to political issues in the Balkans, the grid was undersupplied or oversupplied for a prolonged period and this created a deviation from the average of 50Hz and the clocks that depend on this average to be 50Hz also lost accuracy that currently amounts to 6 minutes.
- Slartie 9y ago
  > Apparently to match the demand at given instance electricity plants rotate their turbines a bit faster or a bit slower instead of switching a complete plant on and off, which results in slight deviations from the 50Hz standard but it is fine as long as it stays between the limits. This is slightly imprecise. It actually works the other way round: the demand is "communicated" through the network by slight changes in the frequency. This can be described best for the example of steam-based generators, as they are typical for the majority of coal/gas/oil/nuclear power plants. When demand for electricity grows, for example because a new factory is powered up, the turbines in the power plants are experiencing larger forces attempting to slow them down, starting with the power plant closest to the new factory. The speed (and thus the frequency) is constantly measured, and if it drops, the steam valve is opened just a tiny bit more to counteract the drop. If this is not possible because the power plant is already at maximum output, either other power plants have to take the load (and the electricity is then routed through the network to the factory) or additional power plants may have to be added to the network. The important thing is: the frequency change is a means of communication, it originates from demand changes, and because the entire network is kept in sync, it works to communicate demand changes across the entire network. Power plants providing energy to a sub-part of the entire network always attempt to run their turbines with the exact same speed of 50 rotations per second, which should ideally always conform to the frequency in all other sub-networks that a specific sub-network is attached to. If just one of these sub-networks does not perform its duty of re-establishing 50 Hertz by powering up their own plant output, the rest of the network must either channel enough power into this sub-network to allow its local generators to re-establish 50 rotations per second by taking some of the load off of them or - if that is not possible or decided against - must also deliberately drop their frequency (and thus the rotational speed of their generators) to match the sub-network that is deviating. The only alternative to this would be to drop off the deviating sub-network entirely, but that is usually only done in extreme cases of deviation.
Maakuth 9y ago
Wow, I didn't know continental Europe is a single synchronized area. Here in the Nordics (Finland) our grid is separated from the neighbours via DC stations to eliminate the need to synchronize with everyone. Here you can see our grid info: https://www.fingrid.fi/sahkomarkkinat/sahkojarjestelman-tila/ https://www.fingrid.fi/sahkomarkkinat/sahkojarjestelman-tila... - "Sähköverkon aikapoikkeama" is actually the cumulative difference between the 50Hz reference and the actual frequency in the network. When that stays zero, AC clocks keep their time. edit: I stand corrected, we are in the same frequency domain with Sweden and Norway. I must have confused myself with the DC submarine cables under the Baltic.
- htgb 9y ago
  That's interesting! According to this map [0] the AC connections are only between Sweden, Norway, Finland and a large part of Denmark. At least under the assumtion that the frequencies are separated in the "converter station back-to-back" in Vyborgskaya, Russia. [0] https://www.entsoe.eu/Documents/Publications/maps/2017/Map_Northern-Europe-3.000.000_400dpi.pdf https://www.entsoe.eu/Documents/Publications/maps/2017/Map_N...
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    "Vyborgskaya" sounds like "station of Vyborg" and not a separate toponym.
- KMag 9y ago
  Eliminating the need for synchronization isn't the only benefit of high tension DC power lines. DC is also sometimes used for long-distance transmission lines to avoid hysteresis losses. The downside to DC is that voltage step-up and step-down equipment is more complicated/expensive and (at least generally) less efficient. In high school, I was told that a lot of the power for Minneapolis was sent over high tension DC lines from coal power plants in the neighboring Dakotas for this reason. This was part of the lesson about how the lakes in northern Minnesota had very little pH buffering capacity due to limestone being scraped down to bedrock by glaciers and therefore being particularly sensitive to SO2 emissions from coal power plants in the Dakotas, but most of the electrical demand for that power also coming from Minnesota.
Kenji 9y ago
This has been annoying me since it started! The drift is nuts, I have to readjust the clock of my microwave because it's so much delayed and I always think it's earlier than it actually is!
neals 9y ago
I was just yesterday changing my oven clock. Interesting to find out why here on HN. I wonder what critical systems (besides my oven) will start misbehaving. Traffic lights, maybe? (edit:Apparently, the emergency broadcast system.)
- detuur 9y ago
  I assume all mission-critical clocks get their tick from a quartz crystal. Clocks running on mains frequency is a very cheap cost cutting measure.
  - Piskvorrr 9y ago
    If your clock is mission-critical, it should be rather well kept. Quartz, NTP, GPS, the list goes on and multiplies like rabbits (redundant this redundantly connected to redundant thats and backed up by those...). But indeed, sometimes you don't need sub-second precision, and relying on The Grid is useful.
    - blattimwind 9y ago
      I only have some experience with lab clock sources, but even those have some amount of redundancy by nature. They are generally a very good oscillator (e.g. a very good OCXO) disciplined to a reference with much better long-term deviation (e.g. DCF77 [uses a PM carrier, not the timing signal], GPS, a rubidium source or a miniature caesium source). Short-term (minutes to hours) is governed by the oscillator, and all these sources will enter holdover when the reference does something stupid. More recent ones can tell you the error margin during holdover. Distribution amps can have redundant and cross-checked inputs for independent sources.
  - chx 9y ago
    If it's mission critical then -- in Europe -- it gets the time from DCF77. It uses an atomic clock to emit a time signal (actually, it uses three and only uses their output when two out of three agrees). It is also compared to further atomic clocks and corrected as necessary. Even many consumer grade clocks will sync to the radio signal once a day and use a quartz otherwise.
runeb 9y ago
Good example of how a critical external dependency without an SLA is a problem waiting to happen.
- wglb 9y ago
  Well, the way I read the article, is that one area is violating the SLA, albeit informally specified.
pjc50 9y ago
The UK's http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ keeps track of frequency, although not cumulative drift. The UK is DC-coupled to the rest of Europe.
- Spare_account 9y ago
  http://gridwatch.co.uk/frequency http://gridwatch.co.uk/frequency shows a monthly average of 49.999 for February for the UK National Grid
  - jpl56 9y ago
    I checked for France : average frequency is 49,99456201 Hz in February with one measurement every 10 seconds (source : http://clients.rte-france.com/lang/fr/visiteurs/vie/vie_frequence.jsp http://clients.rte-france.com/lang/fr/visiteurs/vie/vie_freq... ). Same info for November 2014 : 49,99994706 Hz.
mhandley 9y ago
French grid data from RTE is available from http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/france/ http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/france/ I took the frequency data from the last 1200 days, and calculated the cumulative drift. The raw drift graph, assuming 50Hz is nominal, is here: http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/drift-raw.png http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/drift-raw.png This seems bogus; there's a constant drift. If I compensate for that drift by assuming the nominal grid frequency is 49.9972Hz, the data looks a little more sane. http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/drift.png http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/drift.png You can clearly see the 6 minute deviation this year - it's pretty striking, and certainly nothing this drastic has happened in the last three years. But what's with the positive offset over the previous year? Not entirely sure how much I trust the RTE data.
- Aissen 9y ago
  Awesome work, thanks!
- ajnin 9y ago
  For what it's worth, I have an alarm clock connected to the French grid, and until last month it's been perfectly on time, so assuming it is tuned to 50Hz there is probably something wrong with the source data.
  - mhandley 9y ago
    Agreed - without knowing more about the data provenance, all I can show here are deviations from the long-term trend. It's enough to see the recent problem clearly, but I wouldn't trust the increase after day 900 to be real. Most likely something changed in how they report the data around that time.
JepZ 9y ago
Two days ago, I noticed that my alarm clock and the oven clock where both about 5 minutes late and I was about to create some conspiracy theory about someone manipulating the radio controlled clocks as 5 minutes deviation in the same direction was too much of a pattern to be a coincidence. But then I noticed that my wrist watch, which I hadn't changed since 3 years, still had the correct time. So I doubt my own pattern recognition abilities and changed the clocks. When I read about the power shortage today, I was kinda relieved to get the confirmation, that my own pattern recognition was very fine, but that my theories where just not elaborate enough :-D
- Grangar 9y ago
  Wow, I had the same! Alarm and oven clocks were off by five minutes from my phone. How strange.
hondadriver 9y ago
Ah now I understand why the clock on our microwave oven is running behind. I am sure I set it correctly after the end of the latest daylight savings period (which they also should forbit, different subject). It seems getting worse over time. It now runs behind for guess what.. 6 minutes ;)
stevespang 9y ago
Sounds like theft of electricity. Time to roll the tanks back in and replace the crooks with honest people. I'll bet anyone that the Russky's are behind this, trying to destabilize Europe, the same as they have attacked the Ukrainian power grid using the internet.
radiowave 9y ago
My favourite story about grid frequency involves Laurence Hammond, who would go on to create the Hammond organ. He was a designer of AC electric motors, and when he formed his own company, among their first products were luxury AC-powered clocks. The trouble was that they didn't keep very good time, because of fluctuations in the grid frequency. He solved this problem by making gifts of his clocks to executives of the local power companies, and as if by magic, the timekeeping of all his clocks soon improved.
saas_co_de 9y ago
> The missing energy amounts currently to 113 GWh. The question of who will compensate for this loss has to be answered. This seems to be the primary issue, not the minor drift in cheap clocks. Also, the press release says nothing about "energy war" so that kind of hyperbole does not add anything of value. What is going on here is akin to someone tampering with their electrical meter, except done by a state electrical company, so on a somewhat grander scale. 1 GWh = 1,000,000 KWh and in Serbia/Kosovo the price is around €0.07/KWh so the retail amount of this theft is around €8 million. It is significant enough to make an issue of it, but not really a big deal. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Electricity_price_statistics http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
sctb 9y ago
We've updated the title from “Clocks in Europe are slowly deviating because of an energy war in the Balkans” to that of the article.
Angostura 9y ago
I preferred the old title. It felt fantastically cyberpunk.
pjc50 9y ago
Discussion elsewhere has turned up when this happened in the UK https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xnxQfGl8qfkC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=new+scientist+mains+frequency+31+january+1985&source=bl&ots=id14F5zeEb&sig=dRJUIbKWoORTzPzL1uMQ9FlfKVM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjz49Htr9rZAhUqJcAKHVR-C4YQ6AEINjAB#v=onepage&q=new%20scientist%20mains%20frequency%2031%20january%201985&f=false https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xnxQfGl8qfkC&pg=PA3&lpg=...
maliker 9y ago
International disagreements in power supply, loop flows on HVDC lines, incentives for distributed generation that trigger huge distribution build outs that bankrupt utilities, nuclear shutdowns that make it hard to meet carbon goals—its an interesting time on the European grid. Not that the North American grid doesn’t have problems. But the natural gas boom there has provided a nifty way to meet regulatory goals (carbon emmissions) with generator technology that’s familiar and very easy to build/control.
crypt1d 9y ago
I am almost 100% sure that this is, in part, caused by the recent crypto mining surge. Or at the very least was a catalyst for something that's been cooking for 20 years now. I have no evidence to back this claim, only anecdotal info as I know some people in the area: The Serbian minority in the north does not pay for electricity in Kosovo due to a long standing disagreement with Pristina. The Kosovo government so far managed to find ways to compensate for that, either through loans or by charging more people in other areas. However, I'm guessing, the bills skyrocketed when the crypto mining craze started so Pristina decided to stop footing the bill. I've heard of thousands of mining rigs being set up in the area, largely due to the free electricity. So now there's no more free electricity but there is a huge demand and nobody is paying. Hence the deviations. http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/government-pays-a-million-euro-for-electricity-bills-in-northern-kosovo-03-06-2018 http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/government-pays-a-mi... edit: wording
vincentdm 9y ago
Here's a great movie illustrating how the grid is balanced when a popular tv show ends and millions of people want a cup of hot tea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slDAvewWfrA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slDAvewWfrA
helb 9y ago
Related (and 7 years old) article concerning US grid: "Power grid change may disrupt clocks" [0]. It was on HN [1], but with just two comments. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20110701065839/http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110624/ap_on_hi_te/us_sci_power_clocks https://web.archive.org/web/20110701065839/http://old.news.y... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2703264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2703264

478 points by Aissen 9y ago

As a community of mostly engineering-minded folks, I hope we can take this as a warning to not make our mission-critical systems depend on inputs that are merely convenient side-effects of third-party systems provided free of charge and without obligation. I mean, it doesn't matter how many people post comments here saying things like "50 Hz AC is more accurate than quartz crystal for timekeeping", the fact is that no external agency can take over the action of your quartz crystal and force your clocks to slow down or speed up, whether intentional or not, as an effect of their political actions. If you want a free source of mostly-reliable oscillations, and it doesn't have any real impact if it falls out of sync, sure go ahead and use something like this. But in the case of time, if you want to sync a clock in Western Europe with something that is free and non-internet based, you're much better off using DCF77 [0], which is specifically designed to synchronize time and comes with specific uptime and quality promises. Still ultimately susceptible to political actions, of course, in extreme cases, but at least you know its primary purpose is to transmit time information, and it is in the control of only one (relatively) stable government as opposed to being subject to the unpredictable changes brought about by interactions between multiple interconnected systems. DFC77 doesn't solve the same problem as using AC as an oscillator, of course, since you still need an oscillator to keep your clock going during the downtimes that are permitted to the radio signal. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCF77 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCF77

Piskvorrr 9y ago
Good point about this service, I almost forgot that it still exists (although reception is somewhat spotty indoors). The basic advice is sane ("do not rely on side effects"), yet "third-party systems provided free of charge and without obligation" sounds exactly like that, except now it's putting all your eggs in a basket that's controlled by one entity (be it DCF77, or the GPS temporal component). I would think that the AC-as-a-clock is usually chosen for convenience rather than high reliability - "the juice is needed anyway, why bother with an extra receiver?" - and if you actually need to tell the time, checking multiple independent sources would be encouraged :)
- lb1lf 9y ago
  DCF77 surely cannot be that bad indoors on the Continent? When living at what was then often quoted as the extreme fringe of the coverage area - Trondheim, Norway, on 63,5 degrees of latitude - I had reliable coverage as long as the clocks were kept in window sills (hence, effectively outdoors) However, just moving down to my current home (on 62 degrees, or -roughly speaking- 11% closer to the transmitter site), I now have reliable coverage everywhere (granted, in a wooden house - but the DCF77 alarm clock in the basement synchs every hour, too)
  - gpvos 9y ago
    I've found that antenna orientation matters, even in the Netherlands which is much closer to DCF77 (concrete house).
    - c3833174 9y ago
      Yes, it needs to be perpendicular to the direction of frankfurt for best results You can find more details in the second page of this datasheet https://www.gemischtwaren-haendler.de/shopdateien/3942_1.pdf https://www.gemischtwaren-haendler.de/shopdateien/3942_1.pdf
      - gpvos 9y ago
        More importantly, you would need to know how the antenna is oriented within the enclosure of your clock. I'm pretty sure that that wasn't mentioned in the manual of the one I bought.
        c3833174 9y ago
        Most clocks are thin, so it's easier to guess the placement of the antenna.
        Piskvorrr 9y ago
        Usually the antenna is parallel to the board - and the board is positioned in the largest dimension, which tends to be also parallel with the display.
cesarb 9y ago
Another advantage of DCF77 and similar is that they also broadcast the current time, while the 50Hz or 60Hz AC is just a frequency. If you have only a frequency, you have to set the initial time manually every time you lose power.
jwalton 9y ago
I imagine the difference between DCF77 and a 50Hz clock is similar to the difference between a $40 clock and a $10 clock. :P
- blattimwind 9y ago
  Radio-controlled is pretty much the default around here (and the cheap ones cost perhaps 5 €); I think I've yet to see a grid-powered alarm clock.
  - philf 9y ago
    Here's an IC used in some alarm clocks that uses the power grid's frequency, along with a list of products that use it: https://www.radiomuseum.org/tubes/tube_lm8560.html https://www.radiomuseum.org/tubes/tube_lm8560.html
  - c3833174 9y ago
    It was mostly used in the common radio alarm clocks, the ones with a 4digit red 7 segment display that were all based on an IC from the 70s that handles everything (minus the radio which is a completely indipendent module).
rowyourboat 9y ago
> As a community of mostly engineering-minded folks, I hope we can take this as a warning to not make our mission-critical systems depend on inputs that are merely convenient side-effects of third-party systems provided free of charge and without obligation. That is not entirely true. The TSO is committed to keeping the average frequency of the power grid at 50Hz and has always communicated that. It tries to keep grid time within 20 seconds of UTC, and has historically achieved this. So it is reasonable to use the grid as a time source where high accuracy is not required. The current situation is highly irregular. Using the grid frequency for time keeping is a secondary function of the electricity grid, but it is not merely an unintended side-effect. I agree with the rest of your points about using a different time source where high accuracy is required.
zaarn 9y ago
>depend on inputs that are merely convenient side-effects of third-party systems provided free of charge and without obligation. I would disagree. You don't get it for free, you pay for that. The Grid frequency is regulated and the powergrid providers have, IIRC, even legal obligations on how far they are allowed to deviate the time. Using AC as clock signal is good enough if being wrong by a few minutes is not mission critical. If you absolutely do need accurate time use DCF77 or GPS.
mseebach 9y ago
DCF77 also tells you what time it is, AC can only keep whatever time's been set in sync. The equivalent would be to include a 50-cent crystal oscillator instead. On a only barely related note, I've been playing with the idea of implementing a NTP synced clock on an ESP8266. It'd wake up, join wifi and sync NTP every few hours, then keep time on its internal crystal in between. It should be a good deal cheaper, work anywhere in the world, and have better indoor coverage (I have a DCF77 clock in an interior bathroom in London, and it never syncs. Kind-of defeats the purpose that I have to move it to a south-facing room for the day to get it to sync).
- pjc50 9y ago
  The UI for entering the Wifi password is always the biggest problem with these things. The Dash buttons have an interesting solution involving audio.
  - Drdrdrq 9y ago
    One solution would be qr scanner...
  - a1369209993 9y ago
    You could try a USB SATA drive with a FAT16 filesystem containing "/wifipass.txt". USB-1.0 low speed is 1.5Mb/s and while I can't find documentation on ESP8266's GPIO switch speed, it's CPU is 40MHz, so bitbanging should be feasible.
- c3833174 9y ago
  Or just reporpose an old phone.
  - mseebach 9y ago
    I was thinking about this in terms of building a product. Even with that, a clock generally runs for months, even years, on a single battery. Not exactly phone territory, but might be feasible on the ESP8266, depending on how the oscillator behaves in deep sleep mode.
pjc50 9y ago
GPS is also an extremely accurate source of time, although since it's on a much shorter wavelength your reciever needs a clear view of the sky and is much more complicated.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

raverbashing 9y ago

"Clocks in Europe that depend on the grid frequency" which usually means alarm clocks. I guess a lot of clocks use a crystal now so they're less dependent on the grid frequency. Also don't buy an alarm clock in the US and bring it to Europe and vice versa, unless it is user adjustable (or you are comfortable with a soldering iron)

gpvos 9y ago

This map of the European power system is linked from The Featured Article: https://www.entsoe.eu/Documents/Publications/maps/2017/Map_Continental-Europe-2.500.000_400dpi.pdf https://www.entsoe.eu/Documents/Publications/maps/2017/Map_C... [complex pdf, doesn't render well in some viewers]. Several fascinating points: - Denmark is split between the Nordic (Sjaelland and Lolland) and continental systems. Anyone know why? - Even North Africa is synced to Europe. - A corner of northeast Poland is fed by Belarus. - Cyprus is disconnected, and northern Cyprus apparently has no network to speak of. - You can see the DC links to the other systems, and e.g. a back-to-back converter at Alytus, Lithuania, that isolates the European from the ex-Soviet system. But I see no such arrangements at the Belarusian and Ukrainian borders, or at the borders with Syria and Iraq. Is this just missing information, or are these countries also synced in some way?

asymmetric 9y ago
For some reason I'm having trouble opening the PDF, both in Firefox and with evince on Linux.
- garaetjjte 9y ago
  This is really heavy pdf. Try llpp or mupdf.
  - asymmetric 9y ago
    mupdf worked like a charm! Any idea what makes it so performant (or evince so little)?
    - blattimwind 9y ago
      mupdf is, in my experience, much faster than poppler for complex documents, but mupdf-based viewers generally offer less features than those employing poppler's services (like Okular). These two things might be related.
  - scott_karana 9y ago

DyslexicAtheist 9y ago

NTP, but for electrical grids

cyphunk 9y ago
connected botnet ready clocks, but for electrical grids? Or perhaps you just meant setting up a (non-internet) grid time protocol? It would be a risky venture, I'm guessing, as there may be other functions that rely on the 50Hz grid consistency that would also then need their own special protocol on the grid.
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  Well, there's already the peak/off-peak signalling. You could theoretically send another signal, perhaps with time encoded, at midnight or some such. Note that this is a unidirectional broadcast, as opposed to the complexity of an actual bidirectional network.

mrweasel 9y ago

I sort of wonder how much of a problem that is any more. I have exactly zero clocks that aren't NTP enabled, radio synchronized or just dumb battery watches. Still an interesting "problem" non the less.

Matumio 9y ago
Those clocks being off is just a slight annoyance, the actual problem is the threat to grid stability.

Aissen 9y ago

The delay is now up to 6 minutes since January !

digitalengineer 9y ago
Correct. This is crazy. Everything from my central heating system, kitchen appliances and bed-side alarm clock is off by 6 minutes.
- beojan 9y ago
  You must have a really old alarm clock. And why wouldn't you correct the time manually if you know it's drifting?
  - pantalaimon 9y ago
    What innovations in alarm clock tech am I missing out on that would make me want to upgrade?
    - foepys 9y ago
      Being part of an IoT botnet seems to be all the rage nowadays.
    - Piskvorrr 9y ago
      Essentially the whole "watches you while you sleep [not creepy at all] so it can wake you when you're not in a deep sleep phase." I do use a smartphone for that, as it already has motion sensors, and it is indeed somewhat gentler to wake up to. (OTOH, if I absolutely positively need to wake up at $TIME, the ticking mechanical bedside clock of my grandfather it is: it hasn't been innovated for a century, needs to be manually wound, is completely independent of any external source, and rings loud enough to rouse the dead)
    - ithkuil 9y ago
      cheap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_clock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_clock ?

saagarjha 9y ago

I was curious how the "normal" P=IV formula you learn in school worked here, since I wasn't understanding how frequency could possibly change the amount of power outputted. The linked article (https://www.swissgrid.ch/swissgrid/en/home/experts/topics/frequency.html https://www.swissgrid.ch/swissgrid/en/home/experts/topics/fr...) explains the reason: a decrease in frequency means that the generators are actually turning slower, so there's less power generated overall.

carlob 9y ago
Also remember that P=IV is the equation for DC, not AC.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  It is, if V is the RMS equivalent and the power factor is zero
- arghwhat 9y ago
  Almost. I assume you know, but P=IV is only an approximation when reactive loads are close to zero. It is not the "DC formula". S is "complex power", meaning it includes both the real (resistive) and imaginary (reactive) parts. It is measured in volt-ampere, and is calculated as S=I_z x V, where I_z is the impedance current ("complex current"). P is "real power" (resistive) measured in watts, and is calculated as P=I_r x V or P=S x cos(φ), where I_r is the resistive current ("real current"), S is the complex power, and φ is the phase angle or "power factor"—the delay between voltage and current as an angle. In a pure DC system (think "incandescent bulb on a battery"), the phase angle φ is 0 making P equal S, as cos(0) equals 1. However, in real life, it is only a vague approximation. Electronics switch currents and have reactive components, giving them a non-zero phase angle. They're more complicated to calculate on than an pure sine-wave AC system, not less. (I apologize for any hiccups above. I stopped being an electrician a looooong time ago.)
- saagarjha 9y ago
  Yeah, yeah, you now have a couple √2's because you're dealing with RMS voltages and currents, and a cos(θ) for the phase angle, but when it's all combined it ends up differing by some constant factor.

codesnik 9y ago

using AC frequency for timekeeping seems ridiculous. Does quartz generator cost anything?

Piskvorrr 9y ago
What for, if you already have a clock signal that has been reliable until now?
- bad_user 9y ago
  Because its reliability is happenstance.
  - zaarn 9y ago
    No it's standardized. Outside of accidents the power providers take extreme care to keep the frequency synchronized to UTC. Exactly. A clock using the power grid as reference might be off by 4 minutes over the day but on average it will be perfectly on time.
    - wglb 9y ago
      It used to be in the US that some operators would have a plain off-the-shelf alarm clock in the control room, and, in case the evening load made the frequency dip, operators would adjust things so that the clock would read 6am (for example) exactly the next day.
  - Piskvorrr 9y ago
    Nope. There's man-years of effort per day in keeping it reliable; as evidenced by the point that it takes major political meddling over a prolonged period to throw it off, and an article on HN for people to even notice "it has been acting sort of weird, now that you mention it". "I didn't notice until now" is quite the opposite of happenstance, on par with the PHB mantra "what do we need devops for, anyway, the network seems to be up!" Well it's up because devops is keeping it up. Likewise, the grid doesn't just magically self-balance around 50 Hz.

gchokov 9y ago

Time is relative, you know? :) Maybe time in Bulgaria (where I live) indeed goes slower. p.s. I'll probably get downvotes for my comment..

moviuro 9y ago

As long as it's not 2^32 seconds (~136 years) late/early, NTP will still be able to save the devices it runs on! [0] [0] https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2017/09/27/2153/ https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2017/09/27/2153/

Piskvorrr 9y ago
These are devices from simpler times: no networking stack, not even an OS, sometimes not even firmware, just the basic function encoded with transistors. There's literally nothing to run on. Think water heaters, not RPi.
- moviuro 9y ago
  I know! Though strangely, my own kitchen appliances didn't participate in the continental time-shift (my microwave oven is still ticking correctly). And my remark was more: even NTP can't save ou if you shift the time too much, so it's a good thing it's only ~6 minutes so far.
  - cesarb 9y ago
    > even NTP can't save ou if you shift the time too much, so it's a good thing it's only ~6 minutes so far. Only for the initial step, or if the frequency of the quartz crystal is too fast/slow. The NTP daemon continuously adjusts the clock frequency, so if it was already running and synchronized, the shift will never be more than a few milliseconds.
zaarn 9y ago
Probably not considering some of these used a stepper motor to drive their clock that was coupled to the grid frequency. These devices don't have any computing power.

ju-st 9y ago

how can energy go missing because of an energy war? I found this but I don't understand: "Kosovo has been using more power than it produces while Serbia, responsible for balancing the Kosovo grid, has failed to do this, Nies said. As a result, Serbia has been free-riding on the system."

brownbat 9y ago
Suppose you and I have an agreement to generate power for our neighboring households. We each have solar which works most the time, but if it's too cloudy and we're both using a little more, we'll each fire up some temporary generators to cover the loss. You think I'm using more power than you expected when we started the agreement, but we're both spending the same amount on fuel and solar, so you decide not to fire up your generator. The system might still have enough power to basically run everything, but it might be sluggish, you might get "brown outs" which is when lights are on but dimmer, rather than going all the way to black. A brown out is a drastic, noticeable reduction in frequency. The grid is a bit like a wind up toy where there's a lot of potential energy in the system, but as you extract that energy for work and don't replace it, things (machines, lights) slow down before they stop. Now scale this up from two households to millions. Deviations in frequency might be incredibly slight, and not noticeable to the naked eye. But they accumulate over time if you've tied precision equipment to the grid. Theoretically, certain industrial machines designed to run at specific frequencies will wear faster or break when run off frequency for too long. I'm not sure if those effects generally happen at such small deviations or not.
caf 9y ago
Basically, there are people using power on the grid without paying anyone to generate a corresponding quantity. This means that less power is going into the grid than is being taken out of it, an amount that has accumulated since January to a bit over 100GWh. This missing 100GWh of energy has been collectively sapped from the inertia of the all spinning synchronous machines connected to the grid - mostly generators, but also motors - as a result of which they are spinning slower than they should be. Slowing spinning synchronous generators means a lower grid frequency.
- 9y ago

denzil_correa 9y ago

ELI5 : https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/82h83b/disagreements_beteeen_kosovo_and_serbia_cause/dvafs2v/ https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/82h83b/disagreement...

brownbat 9y ago

Trying to find more details on the specific political issue (ie, not the regional baseline, but the power issue in particular). Best I've got is an offhand sentence that Kosovo is using more power than it produces and Serbia refuses to balance that consumption. https://www.platts.com/latest-news/electric-power/london/kosovo-serbia-imbalance-impacting-european-system-26903978 https://www.platts.com/latest-news/electric-power/london/kos...

jesperhh 9y ago
I found some more information: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/government-pays-a-million-euro-for-electricity-bills-in-northern-kosovo-03-06-2018 http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/government-pays-a-mi... Since the end of the Kosovo war in 1999, the four northern Serb-majority municipalities have not paid Pristina for their energy consumption. To make up for the shortfall, people from other areas of Kosovo had a percentage added to their bills to pay for the north’s electricity. In December, the Energy Regulator’s Office announced that electricity bills will be reduced by 3.5 per cent as consumers will no more cover the cost of the four municipalities’ power as they have done for the past 19 years.
- moltar 9y ago
  I imagine everyone was Bitcoin mining there and the bill was going thru the roof.
  - ermir 9y ago
    Would you believe me if I told you that because of the legal situation (Northern Kosovo does not pay any electricity), there have been tons of crypto mining operations that have sprung up. There are stories of Russians coming all the way to set up warehouses full of mining rigs and generate cryptocurrency using free electricity. Source: I live here.
cat199 9y ago
also (speculation): raising this issue now (rather than earlier in the year) in response to the near-end of the syrian pipeline proxy war, bulgarias mysteriously financed repurchase of it's own gas lines from czech holding co, lavrov and gazprom ceo in belgrade unveiling giant mosaic, etc etc etc...

etaioinshrdlu 9y ago

The headline is kind of clickbait, almost no clocks in daily life get their base clock frequency from powerlines. Edit: Nevermind

triplesec 9y ago
This is untrue given the examples in the article such as oven clocks
baq 9y ago
yeah except the one in my oven, in my microwave and in my coffee machine... all late by exactly the same amount.
- wiz21c 9y ago
  same for me, drove me nuts. Fortunately my PC looks at atomic clocks...
  - Piskvorrr 9y ago
    Your PC also has a quartz oscillator and battery backing, there's no way it synchronizes time from AC power.
    - wiz21c 9y ago
      sure, I just meant my PC has a very sophisticated (hence fragile) way of keeping its time accurate. And forget about battery backing, it's a desktop and its bios battery is long dead :-) (hence the atomic clock)
      - Piskvorrr 9y ago
        Once you do synchronize it off the net, it's still the quartz oscillator keeping the local beat, as it were :)
        9y ago

folli 9y ago

I find stuff like this extremely interesting. It's incredible how connected and interdependent we have become as a society and how we only notice this if things start to break (or at least run out of spec); even if it only impacts such supposedly minor things as a clock on a baking oven.

zaarn 9y ago
A lot of modern society depends on someone not fucking up. DNS could break if the root nameservers stop working for whatever reason. BGP is a major problem if somebody gets a free pass on sending garbage. Using AC as a clock is not the worst and most of the time extremely reliable.
anvandare 9y ago
I'd love to see a gargantuan DOT file mapping out all the world's supply chains, across all industries and economies. I wonder how many 'only one source in the world' (similar to the 1970's chip saws[1]) lynchpin nodes there are... [1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/22/japan_quake_semi_issues/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/22/japan_quake_semi_is...
- grafporno 9y ago
  Here's something similar for >110kV powerlines: https://openinframap.org/#4/47.96/21.01/Power https://openinframap.org/#4/47.96/21.01/Power

mattmanser 9y ago

My microwave adds a minute every week or so because the UK's frequency is slightly different to the the rest of the EU. The clock on the microwave I have is keyed to the continental europe's frequency rather than the UK. It's actually moderately annoying. It was a fairly well reviewed (cheap) machine from Wilkinsons, a budget brand. Perils of cheap electronics. EDIT: Well sounds like it's not the case, TIL, not sure where I picked that up from.

neilwilson 9y ago
The frequency is exactly the same 50hz. The voltage is usually 240 volts rather than 230, but within the acceptable range (which can be as high as 256). Higher voltage is good. The kettle boils faster.
- Angostura 9y ago
  To see what the Grid's up to in roughly real time, I love this site. http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk After last week where demand was very heavy and frequency was below 50Hz, the frequency is currently the highest I have ever seen (50.107Hz) You can also see the French grid using the same site. This shows the European frequency at 50.024Hz, so perhaps corrective action is being taken. Edit - as you were, 5 minutes later UK frequency is 49.902Hz and European frequency is 49.993Hz
saagarjha 9y ago
> the UK's frequency is slightly different to the the rest of the EU It is? What does the UK use?
- beojan 9y ago
  It's not. His microwave must be faulty.
- carlmr 9y ago
  If we go by his numbers and assume the EU uses exactly 50Hz, then +1 minute over a week (7 * 24 * 60 min = 10,080 min) would mean that the frequency in the UK is roughly 10081/10080 * 50 ~ 50.005Hz. I'm not sure if that is the case.

pingec 9y ago

It's interesting that fixing this delay will involve setting the grid's frequency above 50 to 50.01 Hz which will advance clocks about 15 seconds a day and thus it will take 3 to 4 weeks to bring the clocks back on time. And they cannot set it higher than 50.01 because at that point mechanisms for bringing the frequency down to 50 would automatically kick in.

Cthulhu_ 9y ago
Would it "fix" it though? I mean I've already heard a lot of people that just reset the time on their clocks, so in 4 weeks they have to dial them back again. Maybe for unattended time keeping things?
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  Most of the clocks do not have a human nearby to push the reset button (if there is one), as they're industrial automation. Alarm clocks and microwave ovens are mostly a side effect here; and yes, if you have adjusted the time manually, you'll need to do that again.
  - tzs 9y ago
    I wonder how those industrial automation clocks deal with power outages. Europe has quite reliable power, but even the best electricity providers have occasional unplanned outages. As of a few years ago the best was Germany, where the average customer had about 15 minutes per year without power due to unplanned outages (excluding outages caused by exceptional events). (For comparison, the best quartile of utilities in the US averaged about 90 minutes/year for their average customer).
mhandley 9y ago
Where does that 50.01 number come from? For the last 25 minutes, the UK grid figures have been: 50.217999 50.049999 49.990002 50.016998 50.106998 50.091999 They seem to go well above 50.01 for significant periods. Data from http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

M_Bakhtiari 9y ago

I'm usually against technical solutions for political problems, but in this case it seems like a no-brainer to switch to cheap and ubiquitous crystal oscillators to decouple timekeeping accuracy from regional political stability.

saagarjha 9y ago
The benefits to keeping timekeeping tied to power is that often the power supply is much more accurate than any reasonably priced quartz oscillator you'd want to put into an appliance.
zaarn 9y ago
AC grid frequency is much more stable than any crystal oscillator. After any number of years, AC will, on average, drift 0 seconds from UTC. It's being sync'd using atomic clocks to keep it as perfect as possible precisely because people use it as clock.
- mcv 9y ago
  Which is better depends on whether you need short term accuracy or long term. On the long term, grid clock is more accurate. In the short term, crystals are more accurate.
  - howard941 9y ago
    This. In Florida US grid zero crossings randomly bounce around +/- 20nS over a few seconds. Viewing the waveform on a scope can be enlightening (or inflammatory and shocking if one's not properly isolated)
    - wglb 9y ago
      I would be willing to bet that this is noise.
contravariant 9y ago
I don't think the timekeeping is the part to be concerned about.

mrtksn 9y ago

The short version of the story is that grid electricity in Europe is produced by rotating the turbines 50 times a second and that's where the 50Hz AC electricity comes from. Apparently to match the demand at given instance electricity plants rotate their turbines a bit faster or a bit slower instead of switching a complete plant on and off[edit: this is not exactly right, see the reply below], which results in slight deviations from the 50Hz standard but it is fine as long as it stays between the limits. At the end of the day, as the demand increases and decreases, the average frequency would be 50Hz and engineers took advantage of that fact to create clocks that may not be accurate to the second but accurate on average. How do they do that? They count the change in the electricity and assume that 50 changes are exactly 1 second. Unfortunately, due to political issues in the Balkans, the grid was undersupplied or oversupplied for a prolonged period and this created a deviation from the average of 50Hz and the clocks that depend on this average to be 50Hz also lost accuracy that currently amounts to 6 minutes.

Slartie 9y ago
> Apparently to match the demand at given instance electricity plants rotate their turbines a bit faster or a bit slower instead of switching a complete plant on and off, which results in slight deviations from the 50Hz standard but it is fine as long as it stays between the limits. This is slightly imprecise. It actually works the other way round: the demand is "communicated" through the network by slight changes in the frequency. This can be described best for the example of steam-based generators, as they are typical for the majority of coal/gas/oil/nuclear power plants. When demand for electricity grows, for example because a new factory is powered up, the turbines in the power plants are experiencing larger forces attempting to slow them down, starting with the power plant closest to the new factory. The speed (and thus the frequency) is constantly measured, and if it drops, the steam valve is opened just a tiny bit more to counteract the drop. If this is not possible because the power plant is already at maximum output, either other power plants have to take the load (and the electricity is then routed through the network to the factory) or additional power plants may have to be added to the network. The important thing is: the frequency change is a means of communication, it originates from demand changes, and because the entire network is kept in sync, it works to communicate demand changes across the entire network. Power plants providing energy to a sub-part of the entire network always attempt to run their turbines with the exact same speed of 50 rotations per second, which should ideally always conform to the frequency in all other sub-networks that a specific sub-network is attached to. If just one of these sub-networks does not perform its duty of re-establishing 50 Hertz by powering up their own plant output, the rest of the network must either channel enough power into this sub-network to allow its local generators to re-establish 50 rotations per second by taking some of the load off of them or - if that is not possible or decided against - must also deliberately drop their frequency (and thus the rotational speed of their generators) to match the sub-network that is deviating. The only alternative to this would be to drop off the deviating sub-network entirely, but that is usually only done in extreme cases of deviation.

Maakuth 9y ago

Wow, I didn't know continental Europe is a single synchronized area. Here in the Nordics (Finland) our grid is separated from the neighbours via DC stations to eliminate the need to synchronize with everyone. Here you can see our grid info: https://www.fingrid.fi/sahkomarkkinat/sahkojarjestelman-tila/ https://www.fingrid.fi/sahkomarkkinat/sahkojarjestelman-tila... - "Sähköverkon aikapoikkeama" is actually the cumulative difference between the 50Hz reference and the actual frequency in the network. When that stays zero, AC clocks keep their time. edit: I stand corrected, we are in the same frequency domain with Sweden and Norway. I must have confused myself with the DC submarine cables under the Baltic.

htgb 9y ago
That's interesting! According to this map [0] the AC connections are only between Sweden, Norway, Finland and a large part of Denmark. At least under the assumtion that the frequencies are separated in the "converter station back-to-back" in Vyborgskaya, Russia. [0] https://www.entsoe.eu/Documents/Publications/maps/2017/Map_Northern-Europe-3.000.000_400dpi.pdf https://www.entsoe.eu/Documents/Publications/maps/2017/Map_N...
- thriftwy 9y ago
  "Vyborgskaya" sounds like "station of Vyborg" and not a separate toponym.
KMag 9y ago
Eliminating the need for synchronization isn't the only benefit of high tension DC power lines. DC is also sometimes used for long-distance transmission lines to avoid hysteresis losses. The downside to DC is that voltage step-up and step-down equipment is more complicated/expensive and (at least generally) less efficient. In high school, I was told that a lot of the power for Minneapolis was sent over high tension DC lines from coal power plants in the neighboring Dakotas for this reason. This was part of the lesson about how the lakes in northern Minnesota had very little pH buffering capacity due to limestone being scraped down to bedrock by glaciers and therefore being particularly sensitive to SO2 emissions from coal power plants in the Dakotas, but most of the electrical demand for that power also coming from Minnesota.

Kenji 9y ago

This has been annoying me since it started! The drift is nuts, I have to readjust the clock of my microwave because it's so much delayed and I always think it's earlier than it actually is!

neals 9y ago

I was just yesterday changing my oven clock. Interesting to find out why here on HN. I wonder what critical systems (besides my oven) will start misbehaving. Traffic lights, maybe? (edit:Apparently, the emergency broadcast system.)

detuur 9y ago
I assume all mission-critical clocks get their tick from a quartz crystal. Clocks running on mains frequency is a very cheap cost cutting measure.
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  If your clock is mission-critical, it should be rather well kept. Quartz, NTP, GPS, the list goes on and multiplies like rabbits (redundant this redundantly connected to redundant thats and backed up by those...). But indeed, sometimes you don't need sub-second precision, and relying on The Grid is useful.
  - blattimwind 9y ago
    I only have some experience with lab clock sources, but even those have some amount of redundancy by nature. They are generally a very good oscillator (e.g. a very good OCXO) disciplined to a reference with much better long-term deviation (e.g. DCF77 [uses a PM carrier, not the timing signal], GPS, a rubidium source or a miniature caesium source). Short-term (minutes to hours) is governed by the oscillator, and all these sources will enter holdover when the reference does something stupid. More recent ones can tell you the error margin during holdover. Distribution amps can have redundant and cross-checked inputs for independent sources.
- chx 9y ago
  If it's mission critical then -- in Europe -- it gets the time from DCF77. It uses an atomic clock to emit a time signal (actually, it uses three and only uses their output when two out of three agrees). It is also compared to further atomic clocks and corrected as necessary. Even many consumer grade clocks will sync to the radio signal once a day and use a quartz otherwise.

runeb 9y ago

Good example of how a critical external dependency without an SLA is a problem waiting to happen.

wglb 9y ago
Well, the way I read the article, is that one area is violating the SLA, albeit informally specified.

pjc50 9y ago

The UK's http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ keeps track of frequency, although not cumulative drift. The UK is DC-coupled to the rest of Europe.

Spare_account 9y ago
http://gridwatch.co.uk/frequency http://gridwatch.co.uk/frequency shows a monthly average of 49.999 for February for the UK National Grid
- jpl56 9y ago
  I checked for France : average frequency is 49,99456201 Hz in February with one measurement every 10 seconds (source : http://clients.rte-france.com/lang/fr/visiteurs/vie/vie_frequence.jsp http://clients.rte-france.com/lang/fr/visiteurs/vie/vie_freq... ). Same info for November 2014 : 49,99994706 Hz.

mhandley 9y ago

French grid data from RTE is available from http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/france/ http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/france/ I took the frequency data from the last 1200 days, and calculated the cumulative drift. The raw drift graph, assuming 50Hz is nominal, is here: http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/drift-raw.png http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/drift-raw.png This seems bogus; there's a constant drift. If I compensate for that drift by assuming the nominal grid frequency is 49.9972Hz, the data looks a little more sane. http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/drift.png http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/drift.png You can clearly see the 6 minute deviation this year - it's pretty striking, and certainly nothing this drastic has happened in the last three years. But what's with the positive offset over the previous year? Not entirely sure how much I trust the RTE data.

Aissen 9y ago
Awesome work, thanks!
ajnin 9y ago
For what it's worth, I have an alarm clock connected to the French grid, and until last month it's been perfectly on time, so assuming it is tuned to 50Hz there is probably something wrong with the source data.
- mhandley 9y ago
  Agreed - without knowing more about the data provenance, all I can show here are deviations from the long-term trend. It's enough to see the recent problem clearly, but I wouldn't trust the increase after day 900 to be real. Most likely something changed in how they report the data around that time.

JepZ 9y ago

Two days ago, I noticed that my alarm clock and the oven clock where both about 5 minutes late and I was about to create some conspiracy theory about someone manipulating the radio controlled clocks as 5 minutes deviation in the same direction was too much of a pattern to be a coincidence. But then I noticed that my wrist watch, which I hadn't changed since 3 years, still had the correct time. So I doubt my own pattern recognition abilities and changed the clocks. When I read about the power shortage today, I was kinda relieved to get the confirmation, that my own pattern recognition was very fine, but that my theories where just not elaborate enough :-D

Grangar 9y ago
Wow, I had the same! Alarm and oven clocks were off by five minutes from my phone. How strange.

hondadriver 9y ago

Ah now I understand why the clock on our microwave oven is running behind. I am sure I set it correctly after the end of the latest daylight savings period (which they also should forbit, different subject). It seems getting worse over time. It now runs behind for guess what.. 6 minutes ;)

stevespang 9y ago

Sounds like theft of electricity. Time to roll the tanks back in and replace the crooks with honest people. I'll bet anyone that the Russky's are behind this, trying to destabilize Europe, the same as they have attacked the Ukrainian power grid using the internet.

radiowave 9y ago

My favourite story about grid frequency involves Laurence Hammond, who would go on to create the Hammond organ. He was a designer of AC electric motors, and when he formed his own company, among their first products were luxury AC-powered clocks. The trouble was that they didn't keep very good time, because of fluctuations in the grid frequency. He solved this problem by making gifts of his clocks to executives of the local power companies, and as if by magic, the timekeeping of all his clocks soon improved.

saas_co_de 9y ago

> The missing energy amounts currently to 113 GWh. The question of who will compensate for this loss has to be answered. This seems to be the primary issue, not the minor drift in cheap clocks. Also, the press release says nothing about "energy war" so that kind of hyperbole does not add anything of value. What is going on here is akin to someone tampering with their electrical meter, except done by a state electrical company, so on a somewhat grander scale. 1 GWh = 1,000,000 KWh and in Serbia/Kosovo the price is around €0.07/KWh so the retail amount of this theft is around €8 million. It is significant enough to make an issue of it, but not really a big deal. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Electricity_price_statistics http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...

sctb 9y ago

We've updated the title from “Clocks in Europe are slowly deviating because of an energy war in the Balkans” to that of the article.

Angostura 9y ago

I preferred the old title. It felt fantastically cyberpunk.

pjc50 9y ago

Discussion elsewhere has turned up when this happened in the UK https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xnxQfGl8qfkC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=new+scientist+mains+frequency+31+january+1985&source=bl&ots=id14F5zeEb&sig=dRJUIbKWoORTzPzL1uMQ9FlfKVM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjz49Htr9rZAhUqJcAKHVR-C4YQ6AEINjAB#v=onepage&q=new%20scientist%20mains%20frequency%2031%20january%201985&f=false https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xnxQfGl8qfkC&pg=PA3&lpg=...

maliker 9y ago

International disagreements in power supply, loop flows on HVDC lines, incentives for distributed generation that trigger huge distribution build outs that bankrupt utilities, nuclear shutdowns that make it hard to meet carbon goals—its an interesting time on the European grid. Not that the North American grid doesn’t have problems. But the natural gas boom there has provided a nifty way to meet regulatory goals (carbon emmissions) with generator technology that’s familiar and very easy to build/control.

crypt1d 9y ago

I am almost 100% sure that this is, in part, caused by the recent crypto mining surge. Or at the very least was a catalyst for something that's been cooking for 20 years now. I have no evidence to back this claim, only anecdotal info as I know some people in the area: The Serbian minority in the north does not pay for electricity in Kosovo due to a long standing disagreement with Pristina. The Kosovo government so far managed to find ways to compensate for that, either through loans or by charging more people in other areas. However, I'm guessing, the bills skyrocketed when the crypto mining craze started so Pristina decided to stop footing the bill. I've heard of thousands of mining rigs being set up in the area, largely due to the free electricity. So now there's no more free electricity but there is a huge demand and nobody is paying. Hence the deviations. http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/government-pays-a-million-euro-for-electricity-bills-in-northern-kosovo-03-06-2018 http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/government-pays-a-mi... edit: wording

vincentdm 9y ago

Here's a great movie illustrating how the grid is balanced when a popular tv show ends and millions of people want a cup of hot tea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slDAvewWfrA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slDAvewWfrA

helb 9y ago

Related (and 7 years old) article concerning US grid: "Power grid change may disrupt clocks" [0]. It was on HN [1], but with just two comments. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20110701065839/http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110624/ap_on_hi_te/us_sci_power_clocks https://web.archive.org/web/20110701065839/http://old.news.y... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2703264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2703264