Re:Full power outage in Spain and Portugal
by 0cf8612b2e1e on Monday April 28, 2025 @06:52PM
(#43826982)
Old school electric clocks used to (still?) keep time with the grid frequency. Guaranteed to always have N cycles per day. So if things are gradually failing, you might be able to see your clock keeping worse time.
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That's not going to work, because the clock will mainly be showing phase drift.
Having the grid operate at 49.99Hz instead of a perfect 50.00Hz for a day will make your clock lose 17 seconds, but it's completely harmless. That's normal regulation, not a gradual failure. The grid chooses to compensate for that by running at 50.01Hz for a day, but that's solely for the benefit of those people with old-school clocks - the grid itself couldn't care less.
A failure means the frequency drops from 50.23Hz to 48.03Hz, probably within a single second. You'd notice as your clock stops ticking due to the resulting power outage.