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A comment on Continuing frequency deviation in the Continental European Power System. Parent comment

Re:Continuing frequency deviation in the Continental Europea... by tormeh on Wednesday March 07, 2018 @06:46AM (#16535782)
If anyone's thinking of making a clock that assumes the average frequency is 50Hz: Don't do that. There is no commitment to having the average frequency be 50Hz. There is a commitment to keeping frequency close to 50Hz, but no one in the energy industry is thinking about the average. So don't build things on top of that.
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Re:Continuing frequency deviation in the Continental Europea... by petschge on Wednesday March 07, 2018 @07:35AM (#16535932)
That is actually not true for the synchronized european power grid we are talking about here. The time that a clock that runs of the power grid is known as "Netzzeit" (grid time) and there is standards on how far that is allowed to deviate from the legal, public time.

There is websites such as https://www.swissgrid.ch/swissgrid/en/home/experts/topics/fr... that track and display the deviation.

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Re:Continuing frequency deviation in the Continental Europea... by sjclemmy on Wednesday March 07, 2018 @07:49AM (#16535997)
Way back in the dim distant past I had a lovely Sony cube radio alarm clock. It had a switch on the back to determine the clock speed, either 50 or 60Hz. One day, unbeknowst to me, I, or someone else, moved the switch from 50 to 60Hz.

When the alarm went off the following morning, I proceeded to get ready for lectures (This clock was my only means of telling the time, there were no phones or computers in my room) and after having showered I switched on the TV (which could only receive 3 channels at the time!) where I was met with unfamiliar programmes. This confused me for a long while until I realised the time was about 40 minutes later than the clock told me. I missed my first lecture.

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Re:Continuing frequency deviation in the Continental Europea... by duffmancd on Wednesday March 07, 2018 @07:10AM (#16535857)
It depends where you are. I know for example that the Australian standards require an accumulated time error of less than +/-5 sec on the mainland (+/-15s in Tasmania).

Looking at other comments, it seems that we're a little weird down under and most places don't track the drift.

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Re:Continuing frequency deviation in the Continental Europea... by zaarn on Wednesday March 07, 2018 @07:39AM (#16535959)
There is definitely a commitment. European Power Providers keep the average frequency at 50hz in relation to UTC time. With very very high precision.
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Re:Continuing frequency deviation in the Continental Europea... by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC on Wednesday March 07, 2018 @07:34AM (#16535930)
Yes, there is, any accumulated phase error during the day is normally corrected at night.
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Re:Continuing frequency deviation in the Continental Europea... by emiliobumachar on Wednesday March 07, 2018 @07:26AM (#16535901)
Additionally, it will be a region-locked clock by its very nature. We use 60Hz here in Brazil.
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Re:Continuing frequency deviation in the Continental Europea... by rowyourboat on Wednesday March 07, 2018 @07:37AM (#16535943)
When moving from the US to Europe, I had the opposite problem. I had brought along a number of devices that I powered off a transformer (230V -> 115V) here, among them an alarm clock. Which worked off the AC frequency and thus was losing 10 minutes every hour on 50Hz.
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