Because of a change in federal energy regulations, some scientists say your trusty, older plug-in clock may be losing or gaining a few ticks over time.Can this group of corrupt goons be any more clear that they serve corporations and not the American people?
Electric clocks keep time based on the usually stable and precise pulses of the electric current that powers them. In the U.S., that’s 60 hertz (cycles per second). In the past, regulators required power companies to immediately correct the rate if it slipped off the mark. But that precision is expensive to maintain, so last year, the correction part was quietly eliminated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
While your phone and computer might be correct, if your company uses a time clock, then it might be off a bit.
I actually learned this factoid when I was studying to earn my first ham radio license back in 1972. I didn't know that it cost money for the electric companies to comply with the standards. I did know that they corrected for 60 Hz, what we called cycles back when I was first learning electronics. That is one long time ago, isn't it. And while losing some of our regulations is helpful, as you show, some of them are needed, and we don't even realize that they are there, until they are not.
ReplyDeleteAs a musician, this isn't good for me, anyway. Audio equipment is designed to reject noise at 60hz, but still use that part of the audio spectrum. 60hz is just below B1 on the piano, or the second fret on the A string on a bass. Wonky AC power usually makes noise, even in good quality amplification, and I have spent a considerable amount of hours learning how to counteract that noise.
ReplyDeleteNot anything life threatening, but definitely a pain in the ass.
-Doug in Oakland
Can't be too much variance, or the alternators start fighting the grid, and that causes equipment issues like heating and eventually field damage. once you get about a quarter hertz out of sync, lots of issues crop up.
ReplyDeleteI find 10 seconds to be an incredibly unbelievable number, even over a long time.
Science, B., science.
ReplyDeleteit doesn't take long at .001hz below for a while to make the time on a
ReplyDeleteclock that uses line frequency as reference. Just do the math time is 1/f.
Its why in many disciplines we have standards often traceable to NIST.
Otherwise a second is random time and a foot is your right or left and likely
not a real Foot. For many years I relied on 60hz on average being as accurate
as WWV as time and frequency reference.
For an error of .001 HZ that means your clock is .00167% off or 1.442
seconds per day based on 86400 seconds in a day. FYI the error permitted
now easily hits and exceeds .01% or about 100 times greater! Old school
24hour clocks needed a gearing of 5184000:1 to convert the 60 cycle
synchronous motor rotations to a 24 hour sweep of the hands.
Thanks to a friend I got to learn a bit about the grid. The way they share
and move power around is by managing the the lead or lag (frequency difference)
from one generation source to another. The one that leads or is a small
fraction faster is the source and those lagging share some fraction of the
load (you the user and industry). By gently tweaking that frequency you
can move power along the long lines in either direction as needed to get
power where needed.
FYI with less available generation from big plants (usually the nukes)
everyone shuffling like that tends to cause greater frequency excursions.
The deeper you dig the greater the problems caused. Its why the power
industry relies on stable electronic clocks that are corrected by GPS.
And likely more than you wanted to know.
Eck!