when there’s a lot of wind or rain, and the lights dim or flicker for a second, and then immediately kick back on, what is actually happening? I’m asking because it seems like if the power is going to disconnect, it would be from some wire breaking or something. So what is happening when it almost goes out, but it doesn’t?
In: Engineering
The power grid is a constant changing balance where supply must meet demand. All the electrical equipment connected to it is tuned to expect it to be at a set frequency (50hz here in UK) +/- a very small difference.
When supply is interrupted and demand exceeds the load available on the local grid the frequency falls affecting all electrical equipment much of which is very sensitive to small changes in the frequency. Hence lights flicker etc.
Because the grid is very sophisticated and full of mechanisms to prevent blackouts etc then all this can happen and be resolved in less than a second. It is only very rarely things go wrong for more than a second or 2 but that it the point that more serious and blackouts happen because of the compounding problems caused by damage to electrical equipment.
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