During the winds at about 22:30 I found that our house had a spell getting 100 +/- 5 Volts.
My HDR stayed on, showing the last channel I used.
My Panasonic LED TV was without even a standby indicator.
Several compact fluorescent & LED lamps stayed on at reduced output.
The HDR responded to remote commands. Seems unexpected.
Has anyone else note this effect. I realise that you might have difficulty setting up this phenomena. Unless you have a 230 to 110 transformer.
What the EDF were doing I had thought was impossible.
The voltage fell to zero shortly afterwards, I was particularly upset that that stopped me seeing Newcastle humble Manchester's 2nd eleven !
David

Like computers most electronic kit have switch mode power supplies which work with pretty well any voltage and frequency found anywhere in the world.

The Foxsat-hdr Power Supply for instance

90-250V ac, 50/60Hz

That explains it, Graham.
I just thought it was remarkably good !
Presumably it just keeps recording through such an event, however infrequently they occur.

David

Indeed DC output voltages from the psu will be normal.

The conditions you describe are known as a brown out

For Example under multiple fault conditions it's possible for isolated sections of a high voltage system to remain energised by being back fed from a lower voltage system. Any demand left connected to this system is fed by a single transformer providing the energisation. Eventually this will trip from it's winding temperature protection.

In Japan, 100V is permitted as a normal mains voltage, although they can't make their minds up between 50 and 60Hz!

Must make interconnecting systems a nightmare . You would have to use HVDC interconnectors.

I think the two main islands (whose names escape me) use different frequencies, so there's probably a 10Hz beat half way in between!

Out of interest done a bit of googling.

http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2225.html

See page 15 on

http://www.ieej.or.jp/aperc/pdf/GRID_COMBINED_DRAFT.pdf

Lots of HVDC interconnection.

SWIZZ, I am surprised your DNO permitted your supply voltage to fall to 100 volts?

Which device did you use to check the voltage?

EU Regulations insist the voltage should be between 216.2V - 253.0V and thus they should have turned off your supply completely.

I would complain to your DNO.

http://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/Elect...tionCompanies/

Automan.

I don't think it would have been intentional.

Interesting to see the map, I'm amazed that one country can still have 2 frequencies like this, takes you back to when the UK had AC & DC co-existing, sometimes on the opposite sides of the same street.

They have no way of knowing what an individual consumers voltage is. Under extreme weather conditions a control room may be dealing with hundreds of incidents some of which effect systems controlled from other locations.

I can remember an incident in the 70's (I was on the panel of enquiry). During an outage of 132Kv busbar at Willington 132Kv a contractor using an illegal metal reinforced tape dropped the tape onto the the other live busbar. All the circuits on the live busbar correctly tripped by operation of the busbar protection. This left an island of demand with one small generator at Spondon PS left feeding the demand. The generator amazingly hung on to the demand at a very low frequency and voltage which precipitated a release of toxic vapour from the adjacent British Celanese plant. The station staff had to be evacuated immediately.

A complaint which in this case would be to EDF would be pointless. Take the UK high voltage system (275/400kV it's operated to laid down standards of security. In this case the loss of a overhead line (including double circuits), a section of busbar, a transformer and the largest single generation source, there shall not be a loss of supply, system or generation instability and unacceptable voltage levels.

Under extreme weather events multiple faults can and do produce the above events. It would be impossible and massively expensive to cover simultalaneous outages over and above the predefined operating standards. Think of trying to analyse a complex power system like the UK's with hundreds of circuits. The number of permutations of fault conditions would run into the billions.

Hi All

All switching mode power supplies cart up in Highest voltage and the step down. The Normal spec usually is 100 -260V as some countries I think use a 260V mains. I think Australia uses 260.
I may be wrong. It would be 240 V otherwise.
Kirit

Australia's standard is 230v kit should support 220-240 Volts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mains_e...ity_by_country

The Topfield 5800 has the same spec power supply as the Humax. 90-250V 50/60Hz.

MY Sony camcorder mains charger is the same, no problem in using it in Perth WA a few months ago.

Ans----I did in France & got 1300 Éuro compen. In UK I was more concerned about some 100 ft trees hanging over my 60 garden.

David

My EDF 290 V experience was just 30 km from Chateau Repassac.

My worst experience was when a my local transformer burnt out. Power was all over the place with me frantically turning off everything - killed the coffee maker - good job all important kit is spike protected. I am in what must be the most rural area of France.

The whole of the area's power infrastructure has since been replaced following gales (140km/hr) which took it almost completely out.
We were without power for two weeks, No mobiles working for a week and Initially no power to pump the water up the water towers. Trees down everywhere - everyone had one or more chainsaws in the boot of their car.

EDF vans from all over the country were trying to fix up emergency generators, police delivering bottled water.

We once had 5 days without power.
Initially we were blocked in by fallen trees. A neighbour used a chainsaw & I dragged resultant straight trunks with my car.
Then we got to shops that had generators for their freezers, but all the batteries were gone.
Sounds like it got worse & we got out just in time.
Still miss the Gers !
Parafoudres don't protect against steady 290 V
David