What differentiates brownouts from blackouts?
In: Engineering
Brown outs are the utility intentionally lowering the voltage as an energy conservation attempt. Typically this is in the 2% to 3% range, but could vary depending on the utility.
A blackout can be for the same thing (energy conservation as was being done in Texas) as an emergency measure to save the grid from collapse, and the power/voltage is cut completely instead of just lowered. If this fails and the grid collapses, it is still a blackout, just unintentional, and takes much longer to correct.
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