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
That’s a form of a brownout, which can be intentional or unintentional. Typically this happens when electrical demand is close to or above electrical production. A line didn’t break, but something happened somewhere on the grid that is causing increased demand (or reduced production) which results in some things (such as the lights in your house) to not get quite enough voltage to stay fully powered, so they may flicker or dim a bit.
It is sometimes used intentionally to avoid a full blackout. For example, they may shut down or reduce output of a generator that’s having a problem so it doesn’t overload and possibly knock out other generators, causing a larger problem.
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