We Had A Brown Out

[d2dave]

For anyone younger than me you might not have heard of a brown out.
It has probably been 45 plus years since I have heard of them.

So for those that don't know it is a massive drop in voltage to the house and if you had old incandescent globes, they would be dim.

So here's what happened. Power went off for about 8 seconds and came back on. About two minutes later the same happened again.
I thought nothing more about it until half an hour later went to rinse a dinner plate, I had no water.

We are on tank water so we rely on a pump. My first thoughts was the blackout had tripped a circuit breaker in the switch board.
All was good there, so my thoughts turn to the blackout frying my water pump.

Lucky for me I did not have a screw driver in the house to check something on the pump, so I went to the shed to get one.
The fluro light in the shed did not work. I tried the outside light which is an old style flood light and it was dim..

Mmmm. Straight to the multi meter to find that we only have 140 volts coming to the house
Our house has all LED and compact florescent globes which did not seem affected by this low voltage, so there was no tell tale.
Even the plasma tv was working fine.

So as soon as I found out I unplugged all appliances that had electric motors, fridge air con etc.
So had I not had to go to the shed, I could have spent hours checking and swapping the water pump (I have a spare but it involves a fair bit of plumbing as it is different size)
and had the fridge and aircon damaged.

[Eevo]

disappointed, i was expecting toilet humour.

[Eevo]

other than a ground in the street, what causes a brownout?

[DiscoMick]

Where are you?

[Mick_Marsh]

Yes, brown outs are very damaging. Especially for rotating machines.
Blackouts can be less damaging.

Undervoltage protection is advisable as brownouts become more common.

Interesting that the telly wasn't affected.

It would be interesting to find out what caused it.

[bee utey]

You've probably got a pole mounted 3 phase transformer down the street that's blown a fuse on one phase. Good thing that your lamps have wide input voltage tolerance on their switchmode supplies. We used to get brownouts occasionally but because our house is 3 phase we could always run an extension cord from the phase that was still working to run the water pump and fridge.

[d2dave]

I ran an extension cord from my Honda EU 20(Supplied by Kev from Fluids on this forum at a good price)(free plug Kev) so I could have a shower, keep the fridge and tv going

Discomick, Tatura, Vic.

[Vern]

Not a suicide lead i hope?

[NavyDiver]

Used to see them a lot in Central Vic. Freezer motor was cooked by one. Given the state of the power system looks like we will be having more particularly this summer I understand (http://www.wattclarity.com.au/2017/05/warnings-of-load-shedding-in-victoria-and-south-australia-on-thursday-11th-may-and-larger-on-monday-15th-may/) this was interesting

[rick130]

Seen plenty of them over the years.

One about twenty years ago burnt out every contactor coil on a star-delta start for a customers coolroom.
This was only about 70km from Sydney.

We used to cop them a lot in country nsw too, we were on a radial feed from up near Gunnedah 100km away or so as the crow flies, so anything that happened between affected a lot of communities, and it didn't take much as most of the sub stations were old and undersized.
The one on Murrurundi was only upgraded about 5 years ago, about 30 years past when it should've been done.

[Wraithe]

We are lucky here, most power outages are caused by trees falling across the lines, power just goes completely... Between 6 hours to a week when a storm goes through...

Generators are a must this time of year, or like a friend has done, off grid, rarely has a power issue that way...

Brown outs do the most damage, but a spike can be just as bad...

[DiscoMick]

Brownouts can have many causes, including damage and getting off the Hertz balance.

[Homestar]

Brownouts can have many causes, including damage and getting off the Hertz balance.

Brownouts are all to do with voltage - nothing to do with frequency. The frequency of the supply will only dip when a massive load is applied to the generator(s) - usually when one source of supply fails and leaves what's left unable to cope - it would only last a few seconds before the underfrequency protection would trip the other sources of supply - leaving a blackout.

[DiscoMick]

Yes, you're right, I didn't say that right. A drop in voltage, which may be caused by an overload.

[d2dave]

Not a suicide lead i hope?

No. Genny has twin outlets. So I put it near the water pump for one and a long lead into a power board inside the house for fridge and telly.

[trout1105]

We quite often get power blackouts But they normally are fixed in a few hours.
I have 2x 3kva gensets that I keep topped up with fuel and it only takes a few minutes to run some leads and power boards into the house to keep the freezers/fridges running and the TV for the essential Home and Away for the missus.
In the office I simply run an ark pack and small inverter.

Just about every time we get a Summer storm or some other nasty weather we generally loose power and I have usually already set up the gensets before the lights go out because it happens that often.

[crash]

Dave,
We had the blackout for a minute or two, but no brown out.

[SBD4]

Re the TV continuing to work, most electronics/computers these days have an operating voltage of 110V-250V. This is to simplify manufacture and keep parts to a minimum so the same device and be manufactured and sold to markets around the world that have differing supplies (110V/50Hz, 240V/60Hz etc). You'll see the input power specs printed on a sticker or embossed on the device (or power pack).