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
A lot of power grids are designed with automatic fail over. If a part of the grid goes down, say from a blown transformer or a power pole being knocked out, the system is designed to detect that and reroute power through alternate paths. While that system can react extremely quickly, it can’t react as quickly as electricity flows, and the sudden change in load can briefly cause power levels to dip, so the flicker you see is the brief drop in current before the system can compensate.
The flip side of the coin is the people for whom power *does* go out, but only for a few seconds until the system switches over. Their power coming back on is what causes your power to “almost” go out.
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