Speaking of power outages... (in Kaleen)

Thanks for info on 10-15 second blips – but does this also apply to the ones I get quite often of 5 seconds or less? Just enough to trip the digital displays, lights and appliances? I have given up using digital time displays on things like the microwave because of these – CBF resetting them all the time.

That kind of fault is related to a short in the local high-voltage distribution lines (ie. 11/22 kV as opposed to the 240v that gets fed into your house). It trips a circuit breaker at the sub-station called a “recloser” which will re-connect the circuit after 6-10 seconds – it’ll usually try this about 3 times and then give up if it’s still tripping. As mentioned, it does this in case it’s a temporary fault caused, for example, by a falling tree branch that only briefly shorts the lines.

screaming banshee said :

The distribution systems are designed to self clear faults under certain conditions, so suppose a short develops that trips the protection the system will automatically switch on again at least once 10-15 seconds later to see if the fault has cleared. Sound like this is what happened.

We must be on a nearby branch as we got two blips, one that turned off our stereo and a second about 10 secs later also.

Thanks – that sounds like it. I can’t remember it having happened before last night, but it seems it’s not too unusual.

And yeah – UPSs are teh roxorz. (LOL – how outdated that seems now.)

I blame the Gillard government…

Or teenaged public school kids…

and Cyclists…

And people with those green on white number plates…

And Mully…
Or the Gillard government.

The distribution systems are designed to self clear faults under certain conditions, so suppose a short develops that trips the protection the system will automatically switch on again at least once 10-15 seconds later to see if the fault has cleared. Sound like this is what happened.

We must be on a nearby branch as we got two blips, one that turned off our stereo and a second about 10 secs later also.

No idea what caused it but it hit us to and the street lights.

Jivrashia said :

Was quite peeved off when it happened while I was playing a game online.

UPS FTW

I regularly get little outages like that here in Watson. I only notice because it switches my tv off and it doesn’t automatically come back on. Sometimes it’s so brief that other appliances barely seem to notice it.

*shrug*

Some years ago there were three blackouts in one night. I’m in Lyneham.
When the power goes out my alarm system makes a dying scream, so I knew that that was the case.

I’m not sure if it is related to the development around Bruce and Crace, but it is a regular occurrence.

Was quite peeved off when it happened while I was playing a game online.

Kids.