
Continuing frequency deviation in the Continental European Power System - Aissen
https://www.entsoe.eu/news-events/announcements/announcements-archive/Pages/News/2018-03-06-press-release-continuing-frequency-deviation-in-the-continental-european-power-system.aspx
======
mrtksn
The short version of the story is that grid electricity in Europe is produced
by rotating the turbines 50 times a second and that's where the 50Hz AC
electricity comes from.

Apparently to match the demand at given instance electricity plants rotate
their turbines a bit faster or a bit slower instead of switching a complete
plant on and off[edit: this is not exactly right, see the reply below], which
results in slight deviations from the 50Hz standard but it is fine as long as
it stays between the limits.

At the end of the day, as the demand increases and decreases, the average
frequency would be 50Hz and engineers took advantage of that fact to create
clocks that may not be accurate to the second but accurate on average. How do
they do that? They count the change in the electricity and assume that 50
changes are exactly 1 second.

Unfortunately, due to political issues in the Balkans, the grid was
undersupplied or oversupplied for a prolonged period and this created a
deviation from the average of 50Hz and the clocks that depend on this average
to be 50Hz also lost accuracy that currently amounts to 6 minutes.

~~~
Slartie
> Apparently to match the demand at given instance electricity plants rotate
> their turbines a bit faster or a bit slower instead of switching a complete
> plant on and off, which results in slight deviations from the 50Hz standard
> but it is fine as long as it stays between the limits.

This is slightly imprecise. It actually works the other way round: the demand
is "communicated" through the network by slight changes in the frequency.

This can be described best for the example of steam-based generators, as they
are typical for the majority of coal/gas/oil/nuclear power plants. When demand
for electricity grows, for example because a new factory is powered up, the
turbines in the power plants are experiencing larger forces attempting to slow
them down, starting with the power plant closest to the new factory.

The speed (and thus the frequency) is constantly measured, and if it drops,
the steam valve is opened just a tiny bit more to counteract the drop. If this
is not possible because the power plant is already at maximum output, either
other power plants have to take the load (and the electricity is then routed
through the network to the factory) or additional power plants may have to be
added to the network.

The important thing is: the frequency change is a means of communication, it
originates from demand changes, and because the entire network is kept in
sync, it works to communicate demand changes across the entire network. Power
plants providing energy to a sub-part of the entire network always attempt to
run their turbines with the exact same speed of 50 rotations per second, which
should ideally always conform to the frequency in all other sub-networks that
a specific sub-network is attached to.

If just one of these sub-networks does not perform its duty of re-establishing
50 Hertz by powering up their own plant output, the rest of the network must
either channel enough power into this sub-network to allow its local
generators to re-establish 50 rotations per second by taking some of the load
off of them or - if that is not possible or decided against - must also
deliberately drop their frequency (and thus the rotational speed of their
generators) to match the sub-network that is deviating.

The only alternative to this would be to drop off the deviating sub-network
entirely, but that is usually only done in extreme cases of deviation.

~~~
CompelTechnic
I have a question about the power grid I've never gotten a satisfactory answer
to. I hope someone here can help.

If the USA's power grid is about 4,000,000 meters wide, and the electric
signal propagates at roughly the speed of light (3 x 10^8 m/s)
([https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/358894/speed-
of-...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/358894/speed-of-light-vs-
speed-of-electricity)), then it will take roughly .013 seconds for the
electrical signal to reach from one station to another. This is a lot out of
phase! (the period of 60 Hz is .016 sec) How is this managed?

If two generating stations on opposite ends of the country are both
contributing to the electrical signal, how is this time lag accounted for? I
have two guesses:

1\. The power network is "mapped" such that there is one central generating
station and all other generating stations are time lagged based on their graph
distance from this generating station

2\. All stations try to generate simultaneously, with their output signals
interfering with eachother to a certain degree. This might not matter much
because their local loads dampen the strength of their signal.

Either way seems to introduce inefficiencies.

~~~
pjc50
Synchronisation is purely local. They are, from the point of view of a sky
observer, out of phase by the amount you say, but that doesn't matter. Each
generator need only sync up at the time of connection.

Imagine you are on half a tandem bicycle. You are in a room with the chain of
the tandem vanishing beyond the wall. You can't see, but clearly someone else
is pedalling the thing as the pedals are rotating. Getting on it is tricky, as
you have to rotate your feet at the right speed, but once you're on you can
sit there and let it carry them round - or you can start applying pressure
through your feet to do work and accelerate the chain system.

At this point you discover the thing on the other end of the chain is not a
person but a 60Hz synchronous motor-generator. Congratulations, you are in
sync with the grid and (when pushing on the pedals) contributing power.

(A corollary of this is that if your grid connection is down or the grid is
split into two pieces, you can't start up again until you get a grid input to
know you're in phase. See "black start" for details on this.)

~~~
gpvos
Okay, but what if you are at point A, and connected to points B and C, which
are 1000 km away from you and also 1000 km away from each other, and connected
to each other. Now if you would synchronize with B and C, then seen from the
sky B and C would be in sync with each other because they're at the same
distance from you. But how would B and C then transfer power over the 1000 km
link between each other without phase problems?

~~~
TheRealPomax
Remember that power stations do not generate the same single phase signal that
you tap into in your house. They generate three phase AC current. They also
don't link up directly: there are transmission substations in between.

~~~
wintermutesGhst
This is what I wondered, is network topology carefully arranged to avoid
triangular connections, or 'loops' where a generator could interfere
(indirectly) with itself?

~~~
neltnerb
Nope! They're connected in triangles all the time. I was stuck on this phase
synchronization for a while, but really it's just the local phase lead or lag
that is required.

Think of the phase as a distributed signal that indicates the current state of
the local system taking into account all connected generators. It's weird but
true!

~~~
gpvos
Can you elaborate? It is still unclear to me.

~~~
neltnerb
I may be explaining it wrong, but here is a reference, particularly 22.8:

[https://www.scribd.com/doc/118169687/Network-Protection-
Auto...](https://www.scribd.com/doc/118169687/Network-Protection-Automation-
Guide-NPAG-2011-alstom)

This makes it sound more complex than what I learned when I last tried to
figure it out =)

They seem to be describing that where two grids meet they go through a
synchronizer that disconnects one or the other if they aren't in sync, so
implies manually disconnections throughout the network as needed locally.

------
FearNotDaniel
As a community of mostly engineering-minded folks, I hope we can take this as
a warning to not make our mission-critical systems depend on inputs that are
merely convenient side-effects of third-party systems provided free of charge
and without obligation. I mean, it doesn't matter how many people post
comments here saying things like "50 Hz AC is more accurate than quartz
crystal for timekeeping", the fact is that no external agency can take over
the action of your quartz crystal and force your clocks to slow down or speed
up, whether intentional or not, as an effect of their political actions.

If you want a free source of mostly-reliable oscillations, and it doesn't have
any real impact if it falls out of sync, sure go ahead and use something like
this. But in the case of time, if you want to sync a clock in Western Europe
with something that is free and non-internet based, you're much better off
using DCF77 [0], which is specifically designed to synchronize time and comes
with specific uptime and quality promises. Still ultimately susceptible to
political actions, of course, in extreme cases, but at least you know its
_primary_ purpose is to transmit time information, and it is in the control of
only one (relatively) stable government as opposed to being subject to the
unpredictable changes brought about by interactions between multiple
interconnected systems.

DFC77 doesn't solve the same problem as using AC as an oscillator, of course,
since you still need an oscillator to keep your clock going during the
downtimes that are permitted to the radio signal.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCF77](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCF77)

~~~
mseebach
DCF77 also tells you what time it is, AC can only keep whatever time's been
set in sync. The equivalent would be to include a 50-cent crystal oscillator
instead.

On a only barely related note, I've been playing with the idea of implementing
a NTP synced clock on an ESP8266. It'd wake up, join wifi and sync NTP every
few hours, then keep time on its internal crystal in between. It should be a
good deal cheaper, work anywhere in the world, and have better indoor coverage
(I have a DCF77 clock in an interior bathroom in London, and it never syncs.
Kind-of defeats the purpose that I have to move it to a south-facing room for
the day to get it to sync).

~~~
pjc50
The UI for entering the Wifi password is always the biggest problem with these
things. The Dash buttons have an interesting solution involving audio.

~~~
a1369209993
You could try a USB SATA drive with a FAT16 filesystem containing
"/wifipass.txt". USB-1.0 low speed is 1.5Mb/s and while I can't find
documentation on ESP8266's GPIO switch speed, it's CPU is 40MHz, so bitbanging
should be feasible.

------
radiowave
My favourite story about grid frequency involves Laurence Hammond, who would
go on to create the Hammond organ. He was a designer of AC electric motors,
and when he formed his own company, among their first products were luxury AC-
powered clocks. The trouble was that they didn't keep very good time, because
of fluctuations in the grid frequency.

He solved this problem by making gifts of his clocks to executives of the
local power companies, and as if by magic, the timekeeping of all his clocks
soon improved.

------
gpvos
This map of the European power system is linked from The Featured Article:
[https://www.entsoe.eu/Documents/Publications/maps/2017/Map_C...](https://www.entsoe.eu/Documents/Publications/maps/2017/Map_Continental-
Europe-2.500.000_400dpi.pdf) [complex pdf, doesn't render well in some
viewers].

Several fascinating points:

\- Denmark is split between the Nordic (Sjaelland and Lolland) and continental
systems. Anyone know why?

\- Even North Africa is synced to Europe.

\- A corner of northeast Poland is fed by Belarus.

\- Cyprus is disconnected, and northern Cyprus apparently has no network to
speak of.

\- You can see the DC links to the other systems, and e.g. a back-to-back
converter at Alytus, Lithuania, that isolates the European from the ex-Soviet
system. But I see no such arrangements at the Belarusian and Ukrainian
borders, or at the borders with Syria and Iraq. Is this just missing
information, or are these countries also synced in some way?

~~~
asymmetric
For some reason I'm having trouble opening the PDF, both in Firefox and with
evince on Linux.

~~~
garaetjjte
This is really heavy pdf. Try llpp or mupdf.

~~~
asymmetric
mupdf worked like a charm! Any idea what makes it so performant (or evince so
little)?

~~~
blattimwind
mupdf is, in my experience, much faster than poppler for complex documents,
but mupdf-based viewers generally offer less features than those employing
poppler's services (like Okular). These two things might be related.

------
brownbat
Trying to find more details on the specific political issue (ie, not the
regional baseline, but the power issue in particular).

Best I've got is an offhand sentence that Kosovo is using more power than it
produces and Serbia refuses to balance that consumption.

[https://www.platts.com/latest-news/electric-
power/london/kos...](https://www.platts.com/latest-news/electric-
power/london/kosovo-serbia-imbalance-impacting-european-system-26903978)

~~~
jesperhh
I found some more information:
[http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/government-pays-a-
mi...](http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/government-pays-a-million-euro-
for-electricity-bills-in-northern-kosovo-03-06-2018)

 _Since the end of the Kosovo war in 1999, the four northern Serb-majority
municipalities have not paid Pristina for their energy consumption.

To make up for the shortfall, people from other areas of Kosovo had a
percentage added to their bills to pay for the north’s electricity.

In December, the Energy Regulator’s Office announced that electricity bills
will be reduced by 3.5 per cent as consumers will no more cover the cost of
the four municipalities’ power as they have done for the past 19 years._

~~~
moltar
I imagine everyone was Bitcoin mining there and the bill was going thru the
roof.

~~~
ermir
Would you believe me if I told you that because of the legal situation
(Northern Kosovo does not pay any electricity), there have been tons of crypto
mining operations that have sprung up. There are stories of Russians coming
all the way to set up warehouses full of mining rigs and generate
cryptocurrency using free electricity.

Source: I live here.

------
Maakuth
Wow, I didn't know continental Europe is a single synchronized area. Here in
the Nordics (Finland) our grid is separated from the neighbours via DC
stations to eliminate the need to synchronize with everyone. Here you can see
our grid info: [https://www.fingrid.fi/sahkomarkkinat/sahkojarjestelman-
tila...](https://www.fingrid.fi/sahkomarkkinat/sahkojarjestelman-tila/) \-
"Sähköverkon aikapoikkeama" is actually the cumulative difference between the
50Hz reference and the actual frequency in the network. When that stays zero,
AC clocks keep their time.

edit: I stand corrected, we are in the same frequency domain with Sweden and
Norway. I must have confused myself with the DC submarine cables under the
Baltic.

~~~
htgb
That's interesting! According to this map [0] the AC connections are only
between Sweden, Norway, Finland and a large part of Denmark. At least under
the assumtion that the frequencies are separated in the "converter station
back-to-back" in Vyborgskaya, Russia.

[0]
[https://www.entsoe.eu/Documents/Publications/maps/2017/Map_N...](https://www.entsoe.eu/Documents/Publications/maps/2017/Map_Northern-
Europe-3.000.000_400dpi.pdf)

~~~
thriftwy
"Vyborgskaya" sounds like "station of Vyborg" and not a separate toponym.

------
mhandley
French grid data from RTE is available from
[http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/france/](http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/france/)

I took the frequency data from the last 1200 days, and calculated the
cumulative drift. The raw drift graph, assuming 50Hz is nominal, is here:

[http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/drift-raw.png](http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/drift-
raw.png)

This seems bogus; there's a constant drift.

If I compensate for that drift by assuming the nominal grid frequency is
49.9972Hz, the data looks a little more sane.

[http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/drift.png](http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/drift.png)

You can clearly see the 6 minute deviation this year - it's pretty striking,
and certainly nothing this drastic has happened in the last three years. But
what's with the positive offset over the previous year? Not entirely sure how
much I trust the RTE data.

~~~
ajnin
For what it's worth, I have an alarm clock connected to the French grid, and
until last month it's been perfectly on time, so assuming it is tuned to 50Hz
there is probably something wrong with the source data.

~~~
mhandley
Agreed - without knowing more about the data provenance, all I can show here
are deviations from the long-term trend. It's enough to see the recent problem
clearly, but I wouldn't trust the increase after day 900 to be real. Most
likely something changed in how they report the data around that time.

------
crypt1d
I am almost 100% sure that this is, in part, caused by the recent crypto
mining surge. Or at the very least was a catalyst for something that's been
cooking for 20 years now.

I have no evidence to back this claim, only anecdotal info as I know some
people in the area: The Serbian minority in the north does not pay for
electricity in Kosovo due to a long standing disagreement with Pristina. The
Kosovo government so far managed to find ways to compensate for that, either
through loans or by charging more people in other areas.

However, I'm guessing, the bills skyrocketed when the crypto mining craze
started so Pristina decided to stop footing the bill.

I've heard of thousands of mining rigs being set up in the area, largely due
to the free electricity. So now there's no more free electricity but there is
a huge demand and nobody is paying. Hence the deviations.

[http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/government-pays-a-
mi...](http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/government-pays-a-million-euro-
for-electricity-bills-in-northern-kosovo-03-06-2018)

edit: wording

------
JepZ
Two days ago, I noticed that my alarm clock and the oven clock where both
about 5 minutes late and I was about to create some conspiracy theory about
someone manipulating the radio controlled clocks as 5 minutes deviation in the
same direction was too much of a pattern to be a coincidence. But then I
noticed that my wrist watch, which I hadn't changed since 3 years, still had
the correct time. So I doubt my own pattern recognition abilities and changed
the clocks.

When I read about the power shortage today, I was kinda relieved to get the
confirmation, that my own pattern recognition was very fine, but that my
theories where just not elaborate enough :-D

~~~
Grangar
Wow, I had the same! Alarm and oven clocks were off by five minutes from my
phone. How strange.

------
saagarjha
I was curious how the "normal" P=IV formula you learn in school worked here,
since I wasn't understanding how frequency could possibly change the amount of
power outputted. The linked article
([https://www.swissgrid.ch/swissgrid/en/home/experts/topics/fr...](https://www.swissgrid.ch/swissgrid/en/home/experts/topics/frequency.html))
explains the reason: a decrease in frequency means that the generators are
actually turning slower, so there's less power generated overall.

~~~
carlob
Also remember that P=IV is the equation for DC, not AC.

~~~
saagarjha
Yeah, yeah, you now have a couple √2's because you're dealing with RMS
voltages and currents, and a cos(θ) for the phase angle, but when it's all
combined it ends up differing by some constant factor.

~~~
madez
Well, no, not if the voltage for example doesn't stay constant nor changes
with a constant period, because then P=IV becomes an integral that doesn't
simplify like we are used to.

~~~
saagarjha
I was under the impression that voltage was mostly constant most of the time,
except for brief periods where it was switched to keep up with/scale back to
match demand. Assuming constant voltage should be a good approximation in this
case, right?

~~~
moccachino
Imagine a stone being lifted. The weight of the stone is the current, and the
height it is lifted to is the voltage.

Both the weight of the stone and the height have an impact on the energy
required to do the lifting.

Now imagine you are lifting and lowering it repeatedly. It should be intuitive
that doing so 50 times a second requires more power than doing it 25 times a
second (One being more lifts than the other, in the same time period).

~~~
carlob
Things are a bit more complicated than this. In your toy system a stone that
stays still (DC) would have no power (potential energy), which is false. Also
in your toy system m is constant. In general for AC you have both V and I
oscillating.

As a matter of fact the average DC power does not depend on frequency.

You could posit a system where g is alternating between positive and negative
values and the h reacts to it (phase-shifted). You'd quickly come the
conclusion that the potential energy (averaged over a period of oscillation)
does NOT depend on the frequency. (The kinetic energy does, but that's where
your analogy breaks).

~~~
arghwhat
> In your toy system a stone that stays still (DC) would have no power
> (potential energy).

This is false. In the toy system, weight is current, height is voltage. A
stone that stays still has _constant_ voltage, not _zero_ voltage. Thus, it
would have a 'power'.

What the system lacks is to define the stone as a capacitive load. Then it
would sorta make sense.

It is a hypothetical system, so you can only reason about the aspects the
author defined. Tying potential energy in the toy system to real-world
potential energy doesn't work.

(Btw, potential energy is not power, it is work. Power is work _over time_.)

> As a matter of fact the average DC power does not depend on frequency.

Uhm. "DC power" stops existing if the frequency ≠ 0, so in that sense it does
depend on frequency.

It's true that power itself is not frequency dependent. However, any load is,
as reactive losses (parasitic or not) are a function of the frequency. As the
power is a function of the load, power ends up being directly tied to the
frequency.

(A resistive load cannot exist outside of a perfect DC system, so reactive
loads _will_ exist).

------
folli
I find stuff like this extremely interesting.

It's incredible how connected and interdependent we have become as a society
and how we only notice this if things start to break (or at least run out of
spec); even if it only impacts such supposedly minor things as a clock on a
baking oven.

~~~
anvandare
I'd love to see a gargantuan DOT file mapping out all the world's supply
chains, across all industries and economies. I wonder how many 'only one
source in the world' (similar to the 1970's chip saws[1]) lynchpin nodes there
are...

[1]
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/22/japan_quake_semi_is...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/22/japan_quake_semi_issues/)

~~~
grafporno
Here's something similar for >110kV powerlines:

[https://openinframap.org/#4/47.96/21.01/Power](https://openinframap.org/#4/47.96/21.01/Power)

------
saas_co_de
> The missing energy amounts currently to 113 GWh. The question of who will
> compensate for this loss has to be answered.

This seems to be the primary issue, not the minor drift in cheap clocks.

Also, the press release says nothing about "energy war" so that kind of
hyperbole does not add anything of value.

What is going on here is akin to someone tampering with their electrical
meter, except done by a state electrical company, so on a somewhat grander
scale.

1 GWh = 1,000,000 KWh and in Serbia/Kosovo the price is around €0.07/KWh so
the retail amount of this theft is around €8 million. It is significant enough
to make an issue of it, but not really a big deal.

[http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php/...](http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
explained/index.php/Electricity_price_statistics)

------
pjc50
The UK's [http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/](http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/)
keeps track of frequency, although not cumulative drift. The UK is DC-coupled
to the rest of Europe.

~~~
Spare_account
[http://gridwatch.co.uk/frequency](http://gridwatch.co.uk/frequency) shows a
monthly average of 49.999 for February for the UK National Grid

~~~
jpl56
I checked for France : average frequency is 49,99456201 Hz in February with
one measurement every 10 seconds (source : [http://clients.rte-
france.com/lang/fr/visiteurs/vie/vie_freq...](http://clients.rte-
france.com/lang/fr/visiteurs/vie/vie_frequence.jsp) ).

Same info for November 2014 : 49,99994706 Hz.

------
neals
I was just yesterday changing my oven clock. Interesting to find out why here
on HN. I wonder what critical systems (besides my oven) will start
misbehaving. Traffic lights, maybe?

(edit:Apparently, the emergency broadcast system.)

~~~
detuur
I assume all mission-critical clocks get their tick from a quartz crystal.
Clocks running on mains frequency is a very cheap cost cutting measure.

~~~
chx
If it's mission critical then -- in Europe -- it gets the time from DCF77. It
uses an atomic clock to emit a time signal (actually, it uses three and only
uses their output when two out of three agrees). It is also compared to
further atomic clocks and corrected as necessary.

Even many consumer grade clocks will sync to the radio signal once a day and
use a quartz otherwise.

~~~
detuur
I suppose that in the case where the mission itself is critical as well, then
indeed it's going to have an atomic clock signal.

------
hondadriver
Ah now I understand why the clock on our microwave oven is running behind.

I am sure I set it correctly after the end of the latest daylight savings
period (which they also should forbit, different subject).

It seems getting worse over time. It now runs behind for guess what.. 6
minutes ;)

------
raverbashing
"Clocks in Europe that depend on the grid frequency" which usually means alarm
clocks.

I guess a lot of clocks use a crystal now so they're less dependent on the
grid frequency.

Also don't buy an alarm clock in the US and bring it to Europe and vice versa,
unless it is user adjustable (or you are comfortable with a soldering iron)

------
Angostura
I preferred the old title. It felt fantastically cyberpunk.

------
denzil_correa
ELI5 :
[https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/82h83b/disagreement...](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/82h83b/disagreements_beteeen_kosovo_and_serbia_cause/dvafs2v/)

------
sctb
We've updated the title from “Clocks in Europe are slowly deviating because of
an energy war in the Balkans” to that of the article.

------
Aissen
The delay is now up to 6 minutes since January !

~~~
digitalengineer
Correct. This is crazy. Everything from my central heating system, kitchen
appliances and bed-side alarm clock is off by 6 minutes.

~~~
beojan
You must have a really old alarm clock. And why wouldn't you correct the time
manually if you know it's drifting?

~~~
pantalaimon
What innovations in alarm clock tech am I missing out on that would make me
want to upgrade?

~~~
foepys
Being part of an IoT botnet seems to be all the rage nowadays.

------
mattmanser
My microwave adds a minute every week or so because the UK's frequency is
slightly different to the the rest of the EU. The clock on the microwave I
have is keyed to the continental europe's frequency rather than the UK.

It's actually moderately annoying.

It was a fairly well reviewed (cheap) machine from Wilkinsons, a budget brand.
Perils of cheap electronics.

EDIT: Well sounds like it's not the case, TIL, not sure where I picked that up
from.

~~~
saagarjha
> the UK's frequency is slightly different to the the rest of the EU

It is? What does the UK use?

~~~
beojan
It's not. His microwave must be faulty.

------
pingec
It's interesting that fixing this delay will involve setting the grid's
frequency above 50 to 50.01 Hz which will advance clocks about 15 seconds a
day and thus it will take 3 to 4 weeks to bring the clocks back on time.

And they cannot set it higher than 50.01 because at that point mechanisms for
bringing the frequency down to 50 would automatically kick in.

~~~
mhandley
Where does that 50.01 number come from? For the last 25 minutes, the UK grid
figures have been:

50.217999 50.049999 49.990002 50.016998 50.106998 50.091999

They seem to go well above 50.01 for significant periods. Data from
[http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/](http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/)

~~~
ajnin
The UK is not part of the Continental European Power System.

For the Continental European grid, the article links to
[https://www.swissgrid.ch/swissgrid/en/home/experts/topics/fr...](https://www.swissgrid.ch/swissgrid/en/home/experts/topics/frequency.html)
which states that in the case of a time drift of more than 20 seconds the
frequency will be shifted to 49.990 or 50.010 to correct it.

------
codesnik
using AC frequency for timekeeping seems ridiculous. Does quartz generator
cost anything?

~~~
andruby
I was thinking the exact same thing. I've always assumed that AC frequency
wasn't exactly 50Hz and was allowed to fluctuate slightly.

~~~
wilz
That assumption is right. But until now it was always compensated, so that in
the mean it would be ~50hz. This correction mechanism apparently isn't enough
anymore for the current fluctuations in europe.

~~~
TomMarius
Not mean, average. That's a very important distinction because if it was mean,
then it might never correct, but it does.

------
helb
Related (and 7 years old) article concerning US grid: "Power grid change may
disrupt clocks" [0]. It was on HN [1], but with just two comments.

[0]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20110701065839/http://old.news.y...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110701065839/http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110624/ap_on_hi_te/us_sci_power_clocks)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2703264](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2703264)

------
pjc50
Discussion elsewhere has turned up when this happened in the UK
[https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xnxQfGl8qfkC&pg=PA3&lpg=...](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xnxQfGl8qfkC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=new+scientist+mains+frequency+31+january+1985&source=bl&ots=id14F5zeEb&sig=dRJUIbKWoORTzPzL1uMQ9FlfKVM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjz49Htr9rZAhUqJcAKHVR-C4YQ6AEINjAB#v=onepage&q=new%20scientist%20mains%20frequency%2031%20january%201985&f=false)

------
maliker
International disagreements in power supply, loop flows on HVDC lines,
incentives for distributed generation that trigger huge distribution build
outs that bankrupt utilities, nuclear shutdowns that make it hard to meet
carbon goals—its an interesting time on the European grid.

Not that the North American grid doesn’t have problems. But the natural gas
boom there has provided a nifty way to meet regulatory goals (carbon
emmissions) with generator technology that’s familiar and very easy to
build/control.

------
ju-st
how can energy go missing because of an energy war? I found this but I don't
understand: "Kosovo has been using more power than it produces while Serbia,
responsible for balancing the Kosovo grid, has failed to do this, Nies said.
As a result, Serbia has been free-riding on the system."

~~~
caf
Basically, there are people using power on the grid without paying anyone to
generate a corresponding quantity.

This means that less power is going into the grid than is being taken out of
it, an amount that has accumulated since January to a bit over 100GWh. This
missing 100GWh of energy has been collectively sapped from the inertia of the
all spinning synchronous machines connected to the grid - mostly generators,
but also motors - as a result of which they are spinning slower than they
should be. Slowing spinning synchronous generators means a lower grid
frequency.

~~~
ju-st
Thanks, so its basically stolen at the generation level and thus you can't
bill them 100GWh because that energy has never even appeared on the grid and
technically nobody has consumed it.

~~~
caf
No, it has definitely been consumed.

The only impediment to billing them is political.

------
vincentdm
Here's a great movie illustrating how the grid is balanced when a popular tv
show ends and millions of people want a cup of hot tea:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slDAvewWfrA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slDAvewWfrA)

------
M_Bakhtiari
I'm usually against technical solutions for political problems, but in this
case it seems like a no-brainer to switch to cheap and ubiquitous crystal
oscillators to decouple timekeeping accuracy from regional political
stability.

~~~
zaarn
AC grid frequency is much more stable than any crystal oscillator. After any
number of years, AC will, on average, drift 0 seconds from UTC. It's being
sync'd using atomic clocks to keep it as perfect as possible precisely because
people use it as clock.

~~~
mcv
Which is better depends on whether you need short term accuracy or long term.
On the long term, grid clock is more accurate. In the short term, crystals are
more accurate.

~~~
howard941
This. In Florida US grid zero crossings randomly bounce around +/\- 20nS over
a few seconds. Viewing the waveform on a scope can be enlightening (or
inflammatory and shocking if one's not properly isolated)

~~~
wglb
I would be willing to bet that this is noise.

------
mrweasel
I sort of wonder how much of a problem that is any more. I have exactly zero
clocks that aren't NTP enabled, radio synchronized or just dumb battery
watches.

Still an interesting "problem" non the less.

~~~
Matumio
Those clocks being off is just a slight annoyance, the actual problem is the
threat to grid stability.

------
runeb
Good example of how a critical external dependency without an SLA is a problem
waiting to happen.

~~~
wglb
Well, the way I read the article, is that one area is violating the SLA,
albeit informally specified.

------
moviuro
As long as it's not 2^32 seconds (~136 years) late/early, NTP will still be
able to save the devices it runs on! [0]

[0]
[https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2017/09/27/2153/](https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2017/09/27/2153/)

~~~
Piskvorrr
These are devices from simpler times: no networking stack, not even an OS,
sometimes not even firmware, just the basic function encoded with transistors.
There's literally nothing to run _on_. Think water heaters, not RPi.

~~~
moviuro
I know! Though strangely, my own kitchen appliances didn't participate in the
continental time-shift (my microwave oven is still ticking correctly).

And my remark was more: even NTP can't save ou if you shift the time too much,
so it's a good thing it's only ~6 minutes so far.

~~~
cesarb
> even NTP can't save ou if you shift the time too much, so it's a good thing
> it's only ~6 minutes so far.

Only for the initial step, or if the frequency of the quartz crystal is too
fast/slow. The NTP daemon continuously adjusts the clock frequency, so if it
was already running and synchronized, the shift will never be more than a few
milliseconds.

------
DyslexicAtheist
NTP, but for electrical grids

~~~
cyphunk
connected botnet ready clocks, but for electrical grids?

Or perhaps you just meant setting up a (non-internet) grid time protocol? It
would be a risky venture, I'm guessing, as there may be other functions that
rely on the 50Hz grid consistency that would also then need their own special
protocol on the grid.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Well, there's already the peak/off-peak signalling. You could theoretically
send another signal, perhaps with time encoded, at midnight or some such. Note
that this is a unidirectional broadcast, as opposed to the complexity of an
actual bidirectional network.

------
Kenji
This has been annoying me since it started! The drift is nuts, I have to
readjust the clock of my microwave because it's so much delayed and I always
think it's earlier than it actually is!

------
gchokov
Time is relative, you know? :) Maybe time in Bulgaria (where I live) indeed
goes slower. p.s. I'll probably get downvotes for my comment..

------
etaioinshrdlu
The headline is kind of clickbait, almost no clocks in daily life get their
base clock frequency from powerlines.

Edit: Nevermind

~~~
GrumpyNl
In Holland on the first day of the month we set off all the war alarms for a
minute to test if they still function. This month a lot of them failed, caused
by the power frequency

~~~
wiz21c
Imagine for a second that North Korea or US were involved in the electricity
dispute in question... And because of that, as you say, Holland wan't test
it's war alarm (which is vital infrastructure I guess) I wonder what would be
the position of EU...

~~~
cat199
Do you really think the US is _not_ involved in this dispute?

~~~
wiz21c
ahahaha conspiration !!!

~~~
cat199
it's not really a conspiracy when energy payment squabbles are smacking you in
the face in the news..

[https://www.export.gov/article?id=Kosovo-
Energy](https://www.export.gov/article?id=Kosovo-Energy)

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-russia-
gaz...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-russia-
gazprom/ukraines-naftogaz-claims-2-56-billion-victory-in-gazprom-legal-battle-
idUSKCN1GC2Z8)

etc etc etc

